Shake, rattle and roll: 200,000 set to party

Hordes join Lizzo and Guns N' Roses at Glasto for break from financial crisis 

- Lizzie Edmonds and Nicholas Cecil

THOUSANDS of festival-goers are set to enjoy a weekend-long spectacle of music, sunshine and culture at Glastonbury where Sir Elton John, Lizzo and Guns N' Roses are to perform.

More than 200,000 will be at Worthy Farm in Somerset for the biggest music festival in the world. Despite the cost-of-living crisis, the tickets, which cost at least £335 per person, sold out within minutes months ago.

The gates officially opened on Wednesday but the main acts were starting today. Festival-goers were set to be spared the mud baths of previous years as bright weather is forecast almost all weekend.

However, the sunshine over the sea of tents was not matched by the increasingly dark economic clouds gathering across Britain.

Shock figures on Wednesday showed inflation refusing to fall, remaining entrenched at 8.7 per cent in May.

Even more alarmingly core inflation, which excludes more volatile elements such as food and energy prices, rose again to 7.1 per cent, the highest level since March 1992.

Core inflation is one of the key metrics closely watched by the Bank of England. Its Monetary Policy Committee responded just over 24 hours later with a "jumbo" interest rate hike of 0.5 percentage points from 4.5 to five per cent.