Michael Eavis gets a CBE

Glastonbury Festival organiser Michael Eavis has been honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis, the "Founder and Organiser, Glastonbury Festival" becomes a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (that's a CBE) for "services to Music".

71-year-old dairy farmer Michael Eavis, who first staged the Glastonbury Festival on his farm in Somerset in 1970, told the BBC "I've spent 37 years running my show and trying to curry favour with the authorities just to make it happen. I'm so pleased not only for myself, but for the hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who have had faith in me and supported my ideas through thick and thin."

Not only has Eavis done a great service to music through the development of the world's greatest music festival and a dogged determination to keep it going despite huge difficulties at times, Glastonbury Festival is of course more than just a successful music festival and business. Through the Festival's support for good causes he has passed up the opportunity to be hugely rich, with much of the profit being given away by supporting charitable causes such as the current major beneficiaries Oxfam, WaterAid and Greenpeace as well as supporting clubs, schools and more in the local area around his farm in Somerset.

Michael's holding a party next week where we can help him celebrate this honour - let's make it a party to remember.

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