Don’t be the idiot everyone hates at festivals

Picture the scene: it’s midnight on August 24. Your phone beeps, but it doesn’t disrupt your sleep as you’re still awake from the day before, excitedly waiting for this moment.

You’ve had your Alpine granola bars (which your mum made you buy), sleeping bag and baggy of weak weed packed for two weeks now, and the neon wristband has been a permanent fixture on your wrist since it came first class Royal Mail three days ago. You’ve got six hours until you need to leave so you can get the best tent spot for heckling girls in denim shorts while drinking Red Stripe with your mates. V Festival is here.

Little do you know, you’re doing festivals all wrong.

Don’t ‘shop our festival edit now’

That kaftan doesn’t make you look like Vanessa Hudgens at Coachella ’14. You look tacky as fuck. There’s a reason paisley was big in the 70s. Don’t trust ASOS.

I shopped the Festival Edit and ended up looking like an Arizona Iced Tea bottle

Don’t burn out on the first day and end up in a k-hole

If you ingest every single drug you snuck in in your Nike Rosche Run on day one, you’re going to burn the fuck out. You’ll spend the next three days in the Christian Tent, sipping lemonade, eating dry toast and being converted to Catholicism.

Your friends will either a) hate you for this, or b) leave you to go and finger birds behind the Domino’s food truck. Neither is a great situation to be in. Take it easy: the sun combined with alcohol will creep up on you, so maybe wait a while before you’re racking another line of 90 per cent icing sugar.

Switch your phone off

When it comes to festivals, those two days a year when everyone you know is in walking distance around you in little tents where you can simultaneously drink alcohol and shag are GOLD. Stop social media’ing, it’s all about the #latergram. Don’t be the guy with the 877 second Snapchat story. Also: limited phone battery. Use it wisely.

This is why you shouldn’t try and take photos at a festival. What is the point of this?

Bring an abundance of wet wipes and loo roll

Think of how many wet wipes you think you’ll need. Got that figure in your head? Okay, now triple it.

1) armpits 2) day three festival oral sex.

Be a respectful campsite member

Shouting ALAN is not funny. It was very not funny in 2009, and it definitely isn’t funny in 2015. Shouting ALAN at four am repeatedly is even less funny. If you do shout ALAN or something similar, everyone will assume you’re a 43-year-old called Gavin and have a beer belly and hilarious Union Jack novelty fedora. Someone will piss on your sleeping bag.

And speaking from experience, if you leave used condoms in my tent or sniff coke off of the patio flap while I’m sleeping in it, you are THE WORST.

Boys: don’t be a gross mysoginist

It’s hot. It’s a festival. There’s going to be an abundance of bralets and crop tops and micro-shorts. There’s going to be so many boobs and butts jiggling. Some are going to be great and some are going to be not so great. Accept this. Girls: no catty comments. Boys: no comments at all. See a butt? Just go with it. Do. Not. Say. Anything.

Denim shorts? Crop top? Air Max and bum bag combo? It can only mean one thing

Girls: stay standing on the ground

What we lack in height we make up for in everything. Either get to the front, or be content with just listening. If you get on a guy’s shoulders, you’re going to inevitably get covered in a warm, soothing blanket of piss. Reeking of Strongbow infused urine for the next two days is not worth seeing three seconds of the guy from the Kaiser Chief’s face.

Look at me, being on the ground, at the barrier, where I belong

Share your shit or gtfo

You spent ages decanting three litres of vodka into Evian bottles, that’s nice. Okay but do you need all of that vodka? Right now? No? Then why aren’t you sharing? Same goes for boxed wine. Actually, if you can physically drink six cartons of lukewarm boxed white wine without being desperate to offload it on other people, I will pay you to do so. Festivals are about sharing four things: alcohol, tents, bodily fluids and Pringles.

Take your fucking wristband off

You shower with it on and it doesn’t get properly dry. Mould harbours in it. You’re essentially wearing a mould bracelet. Think about it.

I am a disgusting hypocrite