Tickets go on sale early for Glasto 2009

Tickets for next year's Glastonbury Festival will go on sale six months earlier than usual, the BBC reports.

In October, 100,000 tickets will be made available, with music fans able to make reservations for a £50 deposit. An option will then be given to pay the full amount the following April, with a charge of £10 should people choose not to make the purchase.

Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis hopes that the move will help to avoid the slow sales experienced ahead of this year's event.

He claimed that next year's festival will be more in-demand: "Everybody wants to come - everywhere I go people say 'oh we should've been there and we're so fed up about it' because it was so good.

"There was so much stuff going on - Trash City, Shangri-La, The Park - there's all these other things that are going on as well as the main stages and everywhere I go people are kicking themselves because they didn't go, so there really will be a big demand."

Eavis added that the stress of dwindling ticket sales and the controversy surrounding Jay-Z's headline slot caused him to lose weight.

He said: "I've never enjoyed it so much, although I've had a lot of worries this year with the tickets not selling - I lost half a stone in weight at one point."