As the weekend drew to a close and the mud congealed to ankle-breaking consistency, one wondered if a cull of career-conscious practitioners of generic indie rock — The Kooks, The Killers, The View, perhaps — might benefit future Glastonbury line-ups.

All the more reason to cheer the redress offered on Saturday by Lily Allen and the excellent Brazilian electro-poppers CSS. Allen swore nervously and reminisced about childhood Glastonburys with her parents. CSS singer Lovefoxx shed a rainbow-hued catsuit to reveal an even gaudier yellow one.

On Sunday afternoon Shirley Bassey provided one of those surreal cabaret turns at which Glastonbury excels. She appeared in a pink ballgown and gave her blessing to the version of Diamonds Are Forever that Arctic Monkeys had given two days previously. She prefaced Hey Big Spender by commiserating with the audience on the price of the ticket — and then sang the same song all over again.

BACKGROUND

• Glastonbury squelches to life

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• 'Mudbath ahoy' for Glastonbury

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Going down a storm at Glasto

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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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On the traditionally indier-than-thou Other Stage, Mika bravely faced a constituency that regards him with mistrust and bludgeoned them with much-needed pop optimism. Gazing up at rainy skies, he insisted everyone help to stop the rain by copying his high-pitched “Hawaiian prayer”. For Love Today, he mounted his drummer’s bass drum like the Statue Of Liberty’s sexually undecided teenage brother and negotiated his multi-octave range like a speeding car on black ice and, yes, eventually embarrassed the rain into abating.

Given that Mika enlisted two roly-poly female dancers in blue corsets, and several more other chums, to dress up as wild animals while brandishing huge letters that spelt “LOVE”, the least Pete Doherty could have done for the Babyshambles set was rehearse a bit.

Standing in the mud watching Doherty — flanked, as ever, by his supermodel appendage — hold a tune about as well as custard in an onion bag was like being propelled to a dystopia of crap 1970s rock festivals in which tiny public address systems transmitted pub rock platitudes in medieval conditions.

However, if, generally, unkempt boys with guitars tended to disappoint, Kaiser Chiefs were a resounding exception. Anyone who remembers their coming-of-age at Glastonbury 2005, will know that Ricky Wilson thrives in front of a big audience, vaulting the gulf between stage and barrier like a Britpop Bono eager to commune with the 60,000 people singing back the words to I Predict a Riot and Ruby at him.

Headlining on Sunday night, The Who couldn’t have asked for a more ebullient warm-up band than the Leeds quintet. There’s something appealing about the way Roger Daltrey paces the stage like a man in search of a nose that needs punching — or that Pete Townshend will insist on reminding the soggy hordes that his 1971 song Relay invented the internet. The rock pyrotechnics of I Can’t Explain, Who Are You and Behind Blue Eyes were fine, if indistinguishable from the jukebox-standard replicas that punctuate all their shows. Perhaps if you didn’t know any better, you might have deemed this sort of well-drilled efficiency just the sort of thing for which one attends a rock festival.

Twenty-four hours previously, the Park Stage yielded something more deserving of Glastonbury’s mythic reputation. For five hours, Damon Albarn and a huge agglomeration of international musicians — among them, Amadou & Mariam, Magic Numbers, Hard-Fi, Fatboy Slim and the Afrobeat legend Tony Allen — reminded you why you started going to festivals. Reuniting for the second time that day (they had also guested on Lily Allen’s set) The Specials’ Terry Hall and Lynval Golding sang A Message To You Rudy. Then, the Somali rapper K’Naan and assorted members of Tinariwen unleashed a modal Saharan funk racket.

With a microphone thrust into his palm by the Algerian raï star Rachid Taha, a watching Albarn had no option but to improvise. The noise curfew came and went — no one had the heart to pull the plug. By the time, Taha and Albarn rallied the throng into a riotous North African annihilation of The Clash’s Rock the Casbah, anyone employed to monitor the minutes had joined the dozens of people on stage, all of them lost in one of the most thrilling musical spectacles of this or any other Glastonbury.

HIGHS

Africa Express Damon Albarn rallied musicians from Britain and beyond in an unrepeatable five-hour spectacular

The Bees Isle of Wight quintet unleashed a tropical brainstorm of latin-soaked reggae at Jazz World stage

The Coral Too many postOasis types this year, but the superior Wirral quintet delivered a storming set of lysergic janglepop

Gruff Rhys Super Furry Animals’ frontman performed from within his own supersized testcard. Inspired move

CSS Threw out bubble mixture; singer Lovefoxx wore two catsuits; sucked on a helium balloon and urged the throng to “make babies”. Flawless

Arcade Fire There may be some greater force behind their hellfire sermonising. Performance coincided with a sensational sunset

LOWS

Babyshambles Threadbare delusions of poetic grandeur spun out over a tedious hour with increasingly irritating supermodel appendage dancing at wings

Magic Numbers Great when guesting with Africa Express and Guilty Pleasures Orchestra. Struggled to assert themselves

John Fogerty One Creedence Clearwater Revival too many

The View Proletarian indie plod of the worst order

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