From secretary to Bafta-winning Glastonbury producer

Alison Howe (second left) is pictured with BBC team members and Emily Eavis, the daughter of Glastonbury founder Sir Michael Eavis (centre)

A TV producer has been explaining how she went from a secretarial job to producing the award-winning BBC coverage of the Glastonbury Festival.

Alison Howe, from Northampton, first attended the event for the corporation in 1992, but said her memory of the Worthy Farm festival that year was hazy after she suffered sunstroke.

Her team recently won a Bafta award for the live coverage of Glastonbury 2024.

Ms Howe credits a Northampton College teacher for inspiring her to pursue a dream of working in music.

"I had this brilliant tutor [who] embedded into me that, if I had dreams of working in pop music, I just had to be a little bit ambitious and she encouraged me to apply for a job with the BBC, which seemed like madness at the time," she said.

Alison Howe's team won the 2025 Bafta for best live event coverage - for Glastonbury 2024

As the gates open at Worthy Farm for Glastonbury 2025, thousands of people will stream into the iconic site for this year's celebration of popular music.

At the centre of the BBC's television operation is Ms Howe, executive producer at BBC Music.

She has been a regular at Glastonbury for the BBC since 1992.

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, whose antics on stage got them banned from the festival in 1992

She said she could not recall who was headlining that year, but "there were groups like Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, it was a very pre-Britpop era".

"What I do remember was it was incredibly hot - and it was so hot that I slept in the car one night and got sunstroke, so sadly that's my undying memory of 1992."

The records show the headliners in that year included Shakespears Sister and Youssou N'Dour, as well as Carter USM.

The 2025 Glastonbury festival is under way, under the watchful eye of its founder, Sir Michael Eavis (seated)

Ms Howe's road to the TV control room at Glastonbury started at Northampton College, where she enrolled on a secretarial course.

She said: "I'm proud of being a Northampton girl, I lived there until my early twenties and my close family all still live there.

"I look back fondly on being at college there and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life."

The Last Dinner Party was among the acts on the Glastonbury stage last year

She got a secretarial job at the BBC, moved into radio and then to television where, amongst other things, she gave TV debuts to the likes of Adele, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy and Arctic Monkeys.

"It's a pretty cool job, it's not without its long hours and hard work, but it also brings a lot of joy," she said.

"When I look back, my 18-year-old self would just not believe what's happened."