Jo Whiley: When Glastonbury wasn't on we hosted ‘GlastonWhiley'

Times

5 hours ago

Home is a barn conversion in Northamptonshire. We call it the compound. Three of my children are adults now and my youngest is doing her GCSEs. I cherish every moment all four of them are under one roof.
It's a barn with huge windows that look out on to what used to be a field. I've desperately tried to make it into a cottage garden. It's light and it's airy, which is the most important thing to me. I can't bear being somewhere with low ceilings and small windows. That makes me feel depressed. Maybe I have spent too much time in studios where I don't see any daylight. I also grew up in a really old, dark cottage. My parents lived in a post office in a small village; I just remember the ceilings were very low. I craved the feeling of being outside and being able to access the sky and the sun and nature.
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Where we are right now. After Covid with everybody at home, I feel like we've gone through so much living in this house. We've lost people, we've had various animals coming into our lives and living with us, and we've had a lot of fun.
It definitely is. The doors are always open, spilling out on to the garden. We're big on fancy-dress parties. We had one celebrating the Olympics; everyone came as a country. We did a procession all the way round the garden with flags, then we had a big sports day. I think I was Team GB. My favourite outfit was for a Disney-themed party when my daughter, India, who is now 33, was obsessed with The Lion King. She was Timon and I came as Pumbaa. I've always been the warthog, and I reprised that role for her 30th birthday party, which was hilarious.
Snow Patrol performed in my lounge. We did a Christmas show from the house, so we had Jona Lewie doing Stop the Cavalry in the kitchen, with Alex James from Blur serving cheese and cider, Jamie Cullum on the piano in the hallway and Kae Tempest was there too. No Paul McCartney in a Daffy Duck costume though, sadly.
We do have a tiny shed called the Miniscule of Sound. My husband [music executive Steve Morton] is obsessed with dry ice, so it's like an incredibly small nightclub with DJs hammering out tunes until five in the morning.
The last time Glastonbury wasn't on, we hosted an event call GlastonWhiley, where all our friends camped in the field and we had a pig roast and loads of festival stuff going on.
I first went when I was about 17. I saw Van Morrison and John Cooper Clarke and Aswad and it rained so much. I remember our tent, which was right in front of the Pyramid Stage, sliding down a hill towards the stage. We left at five o'clock the following morning, after cooking bacon sandwiches on the platform of the train station.
Accommodation has improved since then. We did the Winnebago thing and it got trashed and then we weren't allowed to have another one. We did shows from there, so we had the Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, Klaxons, Mika and Amy Winehouse — they kept coming into the Winnebago to do interviews because it was the only dry place. I remember interviewing Amy Winehouse and Blake [Fielder-Civil] from basically my bedroom, with my kids there, too. I can't remember exactly who was responsible for the trashing, but I'm sure the Klaxons played a fairly large part.
Now I stay in a nearby hotel, with all the other people working for the BBC. I've had the same room for the past ten years. It feels like going home every time I go back there because the staff are so welcoming.
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No, because I'm their mum. I'm just a figure of fun.
I've got a bronze sculpture of my grandad's hands holding my daughter's hands that we made before he died. It's really freaking heavy, but I would definitely take that, as it always brings back special memories of him.
My dad was an electrician, so I am the most practical one in the family. We've done up two bathrooms recently. I got obsessed with tiles. I tend to do most of the gardening, especially after my husband got grass feed and weed killer muddled up and destroyed the lawn for six weeks until it grew back. He's now banned from gardening.
I went to Chelsea recently and my desperation to get bigger and better plants is extreme. And I've just had an irrigation system installed which has been life-changing. Will Young is my gardening buddy. He was in Cabaret in Milton Keynes and he stayed with us, and we did the vegetable patch together. We regularly exchange chat about gardens. Sharlene Spiteri from Texas is a really keen gardener as well.
I regularly write Post-it Notes saying, 'Clean the shit out of the sink', because the gunk is my absolute pet hate. It's gross and it annoys me that people leave it for me to deal with.Jo Whiley has worked with National Rail on a series of audio guides exploring the connections between artists and the places that inspired them. Find the guides on nationalrail.co.uk/inspiration/musical-routes or Spotify