that's pretty atrocious.

Hope you find it Ben.

I used to dig a hole in the ground which my tent was over and put all my valuables in couple of plastic bags & put the grass back over and lay the sleeping bag over the top.

shit - thats bad. Hope it all gets foound etc!

Not a good idea leaving things as valuable as a camera etc in your tent though really - specially not at reading!

Last year at Reading somebody broke in (if that's the correct erm) to my tent whilst I was sleeping too. I woke up and asked them what they were doing and out of all the stuff he could have nicked, the bastard decided to leg it with an inflatable chair!! I decided not to camp this year and stayed down the road.

2 girls were seen running from my tent with about 5 cans!

THEIVING WHORES

A couple of years ago while I was asleep a guy opened our tent and went through my bag which was doubling as my pillow, I woke up and he said "Sorry wrong tent" then bolted. In the morning it transpired he'd stolen a can of deodorant and an empty scrunched up plastic bag I was going to use as an emergency seat after rain. It then rained the next day. Cunt.

After saying so in the morning a friend's girlfriend said she had been sitting in the awning of her tent smoking a snout and on the way past he had lent down and stolen a three quarters drunk bottle of wine from next to her.

Amazing what some people are willing to steal at five in the morning. They could have got better from a bin.

We went to Pukkelpop this year instead, all the people there were amazingly lovely. Shame they only had three cash points for +30,000 people and you often had hour long queues to make get searched. Aside from that though and the occasional sound man who wouldn't know a good mix from a king size twix it was the best festival I've ever been to. And it only cost £70!

This is why the credit card has been hit for the last two years and we've been in the Travelodge up the road.

You miss some of the atmosphere, granted, but then on Sunday as I headed back to the hotel I saw a fire engine racing onto a camping field nearly knocking people over due to the apparent urgency of something or other and I thought "how much do I really miss this?"

I love camping at Glastonbury and that. Loo queues don't bother me. Ropey hygiene for a weekend doesn't bother me. Idiots do.

I stole the equipment

And after all these stories I have no desire to go. EVER !!!!

Hey,

We camped right next to Ben and also had stuff nicked (wallet, phone etc) and he came over asking if we saw the guys who did it on Sunday morning. So if anyone finds out anything about it please give me an email at fewery2@hotmail.com

Cheers

on the floor in the Silent Disco on the Friday night of Reading. I had no second thoughts about picking it up and slipping it into my pocket. My mate was like "just leave it, someone will think you've stolen it", and I just said to him that I don't care if someone thinks it's stolen. It was lying around on the floor with noboddy near it.

Because what I was going to do was wait until someone dialed the number, then meet them up and give it back to them. Leave fone on floor in disco = get it stamped on and broken. I met up with the guy at about 4am and reunited him with his equipment.

I just wish I could be so sure that someone else would do the same for me if they found my stuff.

I'm pretty sure that the good karma I got from that meant that I fortunately only had a few cans of beer and some apples stolen.

I hope ben gets his equipment back though. This is more important to him that an iPod or fone, because a camera is a photographers livelihood.

I have remembered another theft story! At Leeds 2003 one of my mates left his beers and his cool box of food outside his tent to keep them cool. At about 3am we heard somebody rummaging through and the next morning we realised he'd only taken a pack of 4 sausages. Weird.

When I was watching Muse someone tried to get into my handbag but they didn't get anything just opened it but I think it was good karma as some guy dropped his phone earlier on in the day and I stopped him to give it back

This is why i don't go to festivals, they're full of idiots and thieves! Hope you hear something from someone, aside from handcuffing the bag to your arm there is very little more you could do!

Thats real moneys worth there. Like thousands.

Dont press get their own slightly more secure camping area as they have kit to look after?

..absolutely rubbish - out of 6 of our tents 5 were looked through and opened, and 3 wallets were stolen. Driving licenses and about £250 in total taken. They gave the same excuse also when one of the guys woke up - "Sorry, er, wrong tent." A lot of us were staying alone in our tents as well, scary to think what else these twats are capable of if you don't get woken up by the opening of zips and searching through your stuff for however long.
Someone had left their bag outside their tent at about 2pm with their mobile phone and digital camera falling out... i slipped it back inside and did it back up for them but i hope they picked it up before someone else did!
------Hope Bens camera & equipment is returned safe and sound.

.. about being the very last tent in last field of brown camp was that no one was stupid enough to rob us when there was always two security guards there. That and shouting 'WAKEY WAKEY HAPPY CAMPERS' at 7am seemed to be their only use...

pretty much everyone I met there was incredibly nice and, only the minority are cunts, etc., etc. One bloke legged it after me after I dropped my phone while running between stages. But, I spose at the end of the day, spending 60 quid on a day ticket to get in verus the hundreds of pounds they could make robbing tents would obviously seem like an annual goldmine to the scum of reading...

The people there were the biggest put-off of the weekend.

You could just tell that there was scum present all the time. Even the neighbours didn't act friendly, apart from 2 bunches of really sound lads.

About 5 tents up was this gang of actual chavs. Surprised already, we were a bit shocked when they shouted to us: 'Ave you got girl's pants on?' (to which friend responded 'Yes.').

Its a shame it attracts so much human sewage. It was as if I could feel it hanging over me every time I left the tent... "Someone might do something to my stuff."

Its what you get when you have a fucking dance music 'Powerhouse' there.

Oh well. You just have to be physically able, on the ball, and lucky, not to be affected by them.

I was scared at first, as we were on our own, whilst everyone else had groups. Good job 2 more showed up and camped with us.

Some people, it seems, go to festival purely for the thieving opportunities. Very bad luck, Ben, sorry to hear it. I hope the lost equipment was insured and that you can get some recompense for it.

There's very few ways, really, to out-and-out prevent someone from stealing your gear - they'll sneak in when you're not there, or if they're that way inclined, they'll threaten you for it. Digging a fucking hole under your tent seems to be the only way. Very sad.

to everyone who has expressed sympathy above. I find it really dissapointing that such an obvious (and growing) problem as the huge crime wave that hits Reading/Leeds every year draws absolutely no response from the organisers. So long as tickets sell out in hours and license terms let them cram more and more campers into the same amount of space (and don't get smart about the silent camping field) these problems are just going to get worse and worse.

The only thing I can see happening if these thefts continue to become more and more ubiquitous is the driving out of honest and pleasant festival go-ers and the proliferation of theiving scum and anti-social cunts. That or some massive vigilante backlash. If I'm ever in a tent at Reading again I'm sitting up all night on pro-plus with a 2x4 in my hand.

Someone needs to start applying pressure to Mean Fiddler to hire security that do more than just chug confiscated booze. The police were all very pleasant but essentially helpless to an organisational structure put in place by Mean Fiddler that essentially puts the wrong-doers in charge.