Are you ready for the mud? For the sun? For the toilets? And the most amazing musical line-up of the year?

In less than 24 hours, the gates at Worthy Farm, Somerset, will open, and this year's Glastonbury festival begins.

Glastonbury is the world's most famous music festival. The event was first held in 1970, and thousands of people have flocked to the gathering, held on a farm in the tiny village of Pilton, Somerset, ever since.

Around 12,000 people turned up in Glastonbury's inaugural year, with Marc Bolan and Al Stewart headlining what was then a free festival. This year a record 180,000 revellers will enjoy the biggest Glastonbury ever.

BACKGROUND

• Glastonbury squelches to life

• Big Brother comes to Glastonbury

• Police on watch as Glastonbury fills up

• 'Mudbath ahoy' for Glastonbury

• Stella's vests set to rock Glastonbury

Going down a storm at Glasto

Kicking off our Glastonbury special, the Killers tell Sophie Heawood how a Venice tornado prepared them for Worthy Farm

Glastonbury 2007

One wonders if a cull of career-conscious indie rock bands such as The Killers might benefit future line-ups

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Tickets for this year's festival sold out in a record 90 minutes, available only to music fans who registered on a special website and submitted a photograph. It was part of a plan by Michael Eavis - who owns the festival's Worthy Farm site and has organised the event since day one - to eradicate the increasing problem of people selling on Glastonbury tickets for huge profits.

It didn't stop a few slipping onto internet auction site eBay this week, however, but Eavis has promised to cancel the offending tickets.

Why is Glastonbury so popular?

"It's unique in that it's not on some flat field - it's in a valley in the middle of Somerset," says NME's news editor Paul Stokes.

"It takes so much effort to get there, so when you are there, it feels so enclosed and like its own little world. People call Glastonbury the City of Tents, and that sounds like it's romanticising it, but that's how it is, everything's there - tents, stages, hundreds of shops and stalls, and the whole place takes on this totally complete atmosphere.

"You can't go to Glastonbury and pop into town every day to buy your food, or nip to use a clean toilet - you have to go the whole hog and immerse yourself in the culture up to your neck - often in mud."

Caspar Llewellyn Smith, editor of the Observer Music Monthly, believes Glastonbury is seen as the original British festival, and it's the event's heritage that makes it stand out above its contemporaries.

"There's definitely a lot of history, and it's not sponsored by some soft drink company or whoever. It has its own identity and people like that

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