First came the rain, followed by millions of suicidal earthworms and, inevitably, the news crews whose job it is to show the folks back home just how wise they were to stay there.

But don’t feel sorry for us. This year’s Glastonbury crowd responded to the intermittent showers with a collective shrug – as if to say, “Well, if we weren’t deterred by last year’s lakes of brown, this is hardly going to dim our spirits.”

If there was an air of equanimity about the place, that extended to many of the acts entrusted to soundtrack the opening day of the festival. Take, for instance, those Brit-school alumni turned MOR popsmiths The Feeling. If the quintet had elected to used their Pyramid Stage afternoon billing to try to seem a little less desperately uncool, it would have been understandable. Instead, in an act, of aesthetic self-sacrifice, their frontman, Dan Gillespie Sells, divided the audience into “teams” which then harmonised with each other on Never Be Lonely, and then dusted down a physically irresistible version of A-ha’s Take On Me.

In a few years’ time, those NME darlings Vampire Weekend might also feel brave enough to abase themselves as charmingly as that. To their credit though, Boston’s geeky Afropop emissaries gave the first memorable performance on the Other Stage – and on their own terms. It was the biggest crowd they had ever played to, according to their frontman, Ezra Koenig — which is also what the frontwoman of The Ting Tings, Katie White, said on the John Peel stage.

Presumably having been booked to play here months before anyone thought they might have topped both album and singles charts, the Salford duo seemed to possess a hotline to the hearts of the thousands who had trekked through the site’s most ankle-breaking mud to see them. To these eyes and ears, they looked and sounded like one of those cringesome faux indie bands specially created for shampoo ads. And even if We Walk does sound like Transvision Vamp covering Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust, the reaction meted out to it suggests that’s precisely what people want to hear right now.

A short walk away, at the Pyramid Stage, The Gossip — or, more specifically, the Arkansas electro-punks’ singer Beth Ditto — were on the way to providing the day’s defining performance. Moving into a superb new song with an impromptu a cappella version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, Ditto – dressed in ruby heels and a loose purple ensemble – wriggled down from the stage and worked the front row, randomly “borrowing” hats, garlands and glasses from fans as she did so. She liked it so much that she stayed there, declaring that “stages are boring”.

As The Gossip’s set gave way to one by the torpidly dependable Editors, which sounded eerily similar to the one they played last year, it was hard to disagree. Depending on who is on them, stages can sometimes seem like desperately dull places.

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