Tickets for this year’s Glastonbury Festival were snapped up yesterday in the record-breaking time of 90 minutes.

Music fans swamped the event’s booking telephone line and website after they went on sale. By 10.45am 137,500 tickets had been sold for the festival, which returns after a year’s absence to its Worthy Farm home, in Pilton, Somerset.

An extra 27,500 revellers were able to get their hands on a ticket this year after organisers won approval to boost the capacity to 177,000. But it did little to satisfy the huge demand for the festival, as countless would-be revellers were left disappointed after missing out on the £145 tickets.

The official festival website crashed 30 minutes before the tickets went on sale as it struggled to cope with a surge in demand. A message appeared at 8.29am, which read “Sorry for the inconvenience”, and urged people to be patient.

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Parents conscripted teenage children into online ticket-buying attempts, while even students got up early to commandeer entire internet cafés at 9am. In an effort to beat the touts, fans had to register for the tickets by supplying a passport photograph and personal details.

People then had to quote a reference number before buying the tickets. Despite fears that the system could prove unpopular, about 400,000 fans had registered, giving themselves a smaller than one-in-four chance of grabbing a ticket.

Michael Eavis, the farmer who runs the festival, said: “We had 250,000 people queueing to get through at any one time. It’s brilliant.

“We’ve been doing it for 37 years, so we must be getting something right.”

Arctic Monkeys, the Killers, The Who, Kaiser Chiefs, the Kooks and Dame Shirley Bassey will all play at the festival, which takes place from June 22 to 24. Mr Eavis offered hope to disappointed fans, as they can try their luck again on April 22, when tickets that have not been paid for or are no longer wanted will be back on sale.

“There could be 15,000 to 20,000 of those tickets available,” he said.

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