Bruce Springsteen cost Glastonbury boss Michael Eavis £3,000 when his set breached a curfew by just nine minutes — but the farmer still declared the festival “the best ever” yesterday.

Eavis praised The Boss’s stamina at the age of 58 after he played for two hours and 40 minutes, finishing just before 12.40am.

But the mammoth turn last night put the rocker beyond the watershed, Eavis said.

The owner of the 900-acre Somerset farm said he did not mind paying because Springsteen played some of his best-known works in the last few minutes.

“I gave him 10 minutes and he took nine. I’ll pay the fine — £3,000,” Eavis said yesterday.

“Paul McCartney — 2004 headliner — paid me back. I’m going to pay the Bruce Springsteen one myself.

“It’s not a lot because it was fantastic. The last nine minutes were spectacular.”

A festival spokesman said later: “There are limits because a lot of people live nearby and it is right that things draw to a close at a reasonable hour. Each year we get only a handful of complaints about noise.”

Icelandic chanteuse Bjork also broke the 12.30am curfew in 2007.

Meanwhile, the great Glastonbury clean-up begins today as more than 1,650 tonnes of waste are swept from the fields.

The process, which takes more than two weeks, involves an estimated 500 paid staff alone picking litter and several more doing other jobs across the 600-acre site.

Last year’s figures estimated 48 per cent of the waste generated was recycled, in keeping with Michael Eavis’ ‘Love the Farm, Leave no Trace’ policy.

About 150,000 people were at the festival at any one time and were expected to leave behind 54 tonnes of cans and plastic bottles, 9.12 tonnes of glass and 11.2 tonnes of discarded tents.

There are also 193 tonnes of “compostable material”.

There are 66.77 tonnes of scrap metal, 0.25 tonnes of plastic sheeting, 41.76 tonnes of cardboard, 10 tonnes of dense plastics and 400 tonnes of wood.

Andy Willcott, who oversees the cleaning operation, said today: “It's the same as always. We are trying to return it back to being a farm again.

“The priority is not sending waste to landfill and recycling as much as we can. The majority of waste is removed after the festival.

“We have a few volunteers but a lot of paid staff. The vast bulk will be gone in the first week. It will then be a finer and finer litter pick.

“As the grass grows back more things will surface — mainly things like bits of paper from trampled paper cups. It will be looking a lot better after two weeks.”

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