Glastonbury 2009 tickets to go on sale early

Tickets for next year's Glastonbury Festival can be reserved as early as October, it has been confirmed.

Some 100,000 tickets will be made available in October for the 2009 event, with fans able to pay a £50 deposit before being charged the full amount on April 1st.

Should potential attendees get cold feet in the intervening months, they will be charged £10.

While tickets for this year's event did not sell out until the afternoon of the first day - with a packed festival calendar, fears about problematic weather and a row surfacing over the booking of Jay-Z to headline causing slower sales - the success of the 2008 festival has seen interest pique for next year's event, according to festival organiser Michael Eavis.

"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," he told the BBC.

"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 - who has run the legendary Somerset event for more than 30 years - admitted the stress of slow ticket sales and controversy over the lineup had affected him over the last year.

"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," he explained.

"I was so scared but it came through. So when you get so scared like that and then when it comes right in the end it's fantastic.

"It's completely different to how we're talking six months ago when we were saying 'oh no is this the end? It's on its way out because we didn't sell out straight away...' so we had all those stories about the demise of the festival and they were completely wrong.

"We completely changed it around."

Despite Jay-Z triumphant Saturday night set proving the doubters - such as Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher - wrong, a rap artist is unlikely to headline the festival next year, Eavis added.

"We'll probably be going for the more traditional headliner next year because there are more of them around and after this year everyone wants to come onboard because it was such a good do.

"The thing is people are coming back."