Louis Tomlinson has been hailed the “god of Glastonbury” after bringing a TV into the festival so fans could watch the England game.
In case you missed it, England took it right to the wire but (somehow) managed to book a coveted place in the Quarter Finals of UEFA Euro 2024 last night after beating Slovakia 2-1 in extra time, thanks to two very late goals from Jude Bellingham and captain Harry Kane, despite it being another particularly poor performance overall.
But for those who were camped out in the fields of Worthy Farm at this year’s Glastonbury festival, the chance to catch all the sporting action unfold could have passed them by.
While Glastonbury has been known to screen the football in other years in the past, this wasn’t the case for 2024, as officials had announced earlier in the week that the match would not be shown at this year’s festival due to clashes with performances on the major stages.
Louis Tomlinson hailed Glastonbury ‘god’ after bringing TV for fans to watch England game / Credit: Flickr | England (via Instagram)
This left many festival-going England fans with the dilemma of having to decide to either watch their favourite music artists, or support Gareth Southgate’s men in European football’s flagship tournament instead on Sunday night, and One Direction star – and famously a massive football fan – Louis Tomlinson was one to have found himself in this predicament.
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However, he hatched a plan… and it was this very plan that saw him hailed a “hero” and the “god of Glastonbury” by hundreds of others at the festival.
The 32-year-old Doncaster-born singer – known for being one-fifth of boyband One Direction, turned solo artist – was one of the approximately 210,000 people who attended this year’s Glastonbury festival, but after he found out that he wouldn’t be able to watch England’s Round of 16 match, he decided to head to the nearest Argos earlier that morning and buy a big flat-screen TV and a generator, so he could stream it using WiFi.
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Judging by all the pictures and videos shared on social media, and the TikTok posted by his little sister, Lottie – which has already amassed 650,000 views and counting – it looks like dozens of campers got wind of his plan, and all gathered together around the TV screen in the field to watch the drama live.
Louis, his sister, and their other friends and family who attended the festival with them, wheeled the TV into the campsite and set it up on a little stand using plastic buckets filled with stones.
Glastonbury doesn't show football. But in one of the campsites, someone set up a flatscreen to screen the England match.
Tomlinson told the BBC’s Culture and Media Editor, Katie Razzal, that it was pretty “touch and go” with at times with the signal of the live stream, but they made it work and were able to see England clinch that last-minute victory.
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“It was a little… well, we brought a TV in,” Tomlinson told the BBC.
“Very Glasto, in some stones and a little stand. It was a little bit touch and go at times, because the signal kept going in and out, but yeah, luckily we got the win.
The Three Lions will now face Switzerland in Quarter Finals of the Euros this Saturday at 5pm in Dusseldorf.
Featured Image – BBC
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‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Benson Boone has announced a headline gig in Manchester – and it’s a big one
Danny Jones
American pop sensation and unrivalled king of unnecessary front flips, Benson Boone, has just announced his first-ever headline Manchester arena gig as part of a new arena tour.
The solo artist and acrobatic chart-topper has seen a meteoric rise in the US and, as is usually the case across the Atlantic, he’s become increasingly popular over here too.
Benson may have performed here in Manchester before as part of the 2024 MTV EMAs and for a small show at The Deaf Institute, but now big fans have the added Boone of getting to watch a standalone show at one of Europe’s leading indoor entertainment venues.
Announced on Friday, 30 May, the 22-year-old will be making his way across the pond from Washington for a limited run of UK concerts, with a date at Co-op Live arena being one of just five dates.
Extending his ‘American Heart Tour’ ahead of the release of his eponymous sophomore record, with this autumn leg, Co-op Live will mark his individual visit to 0161.
The Grammy-nominated artist has earned several nods of recognition already for his first album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, which was released just last spring.
He has been described as among the current trend of male singers who fit into the American Idol and ‘Voice audition pop’ genre (a term recently coined online), along with the likes of Teddy Swims, Shawn Mendes, Alex Warren and others.
Regardless of the slightly tongue-in-cheek term, he’s become a huge hit around the world and landing him is still a big coup for the venue that has already welcomed similarly massive pop contemporaries like Swims, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and more.
In case you’re wondering just how big a deal he is over in the States, even this early in his career, his domestic headline dates sold out in seconds, quite literally…
The last time he visited Co-op Live was to perform at the most recent MTV EMAs
Benson Boone is coming to Manchester on Monday, 27 October and will be playing just two other British venues: The O2 in London (two nights) and the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.
Safe to say you don’t want to miss this one if you like soaring vocals and lots of flipping.
General admission tickets go live at 10am on Thursday, 5 June, but Co-op Members can gain access via the arena’s official pre-sale window from the same time on Tuesday (3 Jun).
Emily Sergeant -
1st July 2024 
