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I saw a survey commissioned by the recently that said that a weekend at the Glastonbury Festival was one of the top five special ways people liked to spend a big weekend. (Glastonbury was second in the survey, less popular than a weekend on a tropical beach but ahead of a London shopping spree, a gourmet meal, or a trip to Wembley for the FA Cup Final.)

This expression of public fondness for the Festival doesn't surprise me - Glastonbury is the perfect way to lose yourself in the best music from the UK and around the world. The Festival is 40 years old this year, and has hosted hundreds of thousands of Glasto-goers in the fields around Worthy Farm in Somerset.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã has certainly helped bring Glastonbury to a wider public since the relationship with the Festival beginning in the muddy year of 1997 (see Mark Cooper's blog post about our TV coverage).

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio has also done its bit to bring the Festival experience from the fields of Worthy into the country's kitchens. Each year new innovations in radio coverage are sought.

This year we're coming back bigger and better (42 hours of live radio, overall 83 hours of Glasto coverage over the weekend if you include the excellent overnight programmes). Have a look here for the full schedule.

The 18 dedicated and very hard-working production staff will deliver a plethora of entertainment to delight your discerning radio ears. Highlights include live sets from the headliners, Cerys Matthews and the London Gospel Choir, Steve Lamacq's big interviews (fingers crossed) with the likes of Gorillaz, Muse, The Flaming Lips, La Roux and Florence, Tom Ravenscroft's excavations into the Glastonbury underground, and Lauren Laverne's shows which will boast a Festival Diary from Foals, an appearance by Slash, as well as hours of other good stuff.

Last year was the first in which the Ö÷²¥´óÐã extended live rolling coverage from the site. For 39 hours, 6 Music's team of Glastonbury veterans (some more or less grizzled than others) such as Steve Lamacq, Adam & Joe, Lauren Laverne, Gideon Coe and Cerys Matthews explored all the facets of the Festival. Interviews with star turns like Spinal Tap, Tom Jones, the boys from Blur were juxtaposed with exclusive sessions from the likes of Florence & the Machine and most important of all the airwaves were full of live music highlights harvested from across the festival's main stages.

6 Music, with its mission to explore and bring context to popular music is well suited to covering an event as broad and as deep as Glastonbury. But even with the station's wealth of trusted guide presenters and Glastonbury experience things can go a bit awry.

I'm really proud of what we achieved last year. Sustaining that level of live radio takes a lot of energy and hard work. I've never been on an outside broadcast like it and believe me, it was stressful and tiring but the response from the listeners was amazing and kept us going. As you can imagine, producing live radio can be fraught with problems. Guests going missing, CD players not working, and when your exclusive interview with one of the Festival headliners falls off air, not once but TWICE, the nerves are on a knife edge...

Last year Steve Lamacq landed an exclusive interview with Bruce Springsteen. It was the only broadcast interview Bruce did before the Festival. To set the scene for his monumental live set the next day we attempted to play out the recording. However, just as we pushed the button we lost all our power. The generator had packed up temporarily! Understandably, Steve wasn't best pleased but we restored the power quickly and promised to play the interview in full the next day, mixed with highlights from Bruce's set.

Unfortunately, the power failed again the next day. Two outs over the entire long weekend, and both of them during Springsteen interview leaving us Dancing In The Dark. Again quite a stressful situation but Lamacq's line after the second failure was a gem that brought a wry smile to everyone's face. After apologising for the technical difficulty he tried to explain the problem by saying that Tom Jones had vacated the Pyramid Stage after playing a stunning set, much of it televised.

The power failure, Lamacq surmised, was down to "a surge caused by two million electric kettles being switched on at the same time." Hopefully, we can keep the power going this year, if not I'll be on a bicycle round the back of the studio trying to generate it myself...

And what am I looking forward to? The return of Adam & Joe will be a tonic for the troops. I think they're bringing their own inflatable Big British Castle with them.

Also, the inimitable Jarvis Cocker. I'm so pleased we managed to coax him down to Glastonbury to do a live show from site (Sunday 6.00-8.00pm). Surely the 40th Glasto wouldn't be the same without him. I wonder if we can get him sing Common People for us?!

With all that plus a sprinkling of Funk & Soul from Craig Charles, new band delights from Tom Robinson's Introducing Show and Gideon Coe's expert opinion on proceedings I think music lovers and festival aficionados will be regally and digitally entertained this Glastonbury on Ö÷²¥´óÐã 6 Music.

Paul Rodgers is the Editor of Ö÷²¥´óÐã 6 Music

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