PILTON, England (Reuters) ? Pop star Beyonce takes the main stage at Glastonbury on Sunday as the closing act, hoping to repeat husband Jay-Z's success in 2008 and help a huge crowd banish thoughts of mud and the long trip home.
Around 180,000 people crammed on to Worthy Farm in picturesque southwest England for three days of music and fun at one of the world's biggest music festivals. The abiding memory for many this year will be the mud.
Heavy rain on Friday and before turned the 900 acre site into a giant bog, but it failed to dampen the mood among music lovers who came to see a bewildering choice of hundreds of acts across dozens of stages.
"We managed to survive in the most adverse conditions," said festival founder Michael Eavis. "We are survivors, after 41 years," he told reporters.
The sunshine broke out on Sunday and bikinis replaced raincoats as the festival geared up for its Sunday night climax.
Jay-Z headlined in 2008, causing controversy among some of British rock's biggest names who said hip-hop had no place at the revered event. But the performer silenced his critics and rap is now a major part of the Glastonbury schedule.
Fans speculated that Jay-Z might join Beyonce on stage and that she may also reunite with members of her former band Destiny's Child.
Eavis was briefly distracted by questions about the death of a senior member of Britain's ruling Conservative Party, who was found in a luxury accommodation area on Sunday morning.
He did not name the deceased, but British media said he was Christopher Shale, chairman of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association. Initial reports gave the cause of death as a heart attack, but Eavis said he understood it was suicide.
U2 PROTEST GRABS HEADLINES
Friday night's headliners U2 impressed critics with a string of their greatest hits performed in the driving rain.
A small pressure group called Art Uncut inflated a large balloon with the words "U Pay Tax 2?" in protest against the band's decision several years ago to relocate its operations from Ireland to the Netherlands for tax purposes.
Campaigners complained of rough handling by security guards who forced them to take the balloon down, but Eavis shrugged off the criticism, saying the story had been exaggerated.
"It was only one balloon," he said. "It was all churned up as being a huge thing, but it wasn't at all."
"We didn't want to upset anyone," he said, adding that U2 lead singer Bono had been aware of the protest. "It was all done very, very gently."
Coldplay played the main Pyramid stage slot on Saturday, watched by tens of thousands of people as they worked their way through a set of songs old and new.
Pulp were surprise guests on the smaller The Park stage, and drew a record crowd there of around 30,000. London rapper Tinie Tempah was one of the most popular performers this year, as were the Chemical Brothers, blues veteran B.B. King and Elbow.
Glastonbury has grown from a humble gathering of 1,500 people on Eavis's dairy farm in 1970, each paying one pound ($1.60) and receiving free milk, to a giant celebration of music costing 195 pounds for a basic ticket.
There will be no festival in 2012, but Eavis said he already had three major acts lined up for 2013.
(Editing by Jan Harvey)
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