Mark Ellen: Sure it's a bit corporate at Glastonbury. So what?

Who are these people who claim that Glastonbury is now "too big", or "too corporate", or that it's "firmly in the comfort zone"? Have they ever set a sensibly water-proofed foot in the place? I rather doubt it somehow.

They're probably the same types who lead their coverage of Europe's greatest entertainment event with pictures of Kate Moss lookalikes in hot pants, wellies and cowboy hats hoisting a white wine spritzer and then claim the festival's "gone middle-class". Or go with a close-up of two deck chairs and a wicker hamper and start quacking on about "Rock Glyndebourne". Or open with a smattering of WAGs and D-list celebrities tottering about in their ghetto casuals and suggest it's been co-opted into the world of Heat magazine.

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When I first went to Glastonbury, in 1991, there wasn't a trace of corporate hospitality. Sixteen years later the whole spectacle is bigger, broader and infinitely better than it was and there's now a fair amount of it. Why the hell not? How can any business expand if it doesn't find new revenues and, in the current climate of entertainment over-demand, there's clearly a market for both "the haves" and the "have-yachts".

Why not take the money from anyone rich enough to want to offload it and invest it in the tiny details that make the event unique and unmatchable? And I, personally, regard the sight of buffoons being ferried in on quad bikes from their spotless off-site compounds as all part of the enjoyment - as daft and harmless as the Elizabethan stilt-walkers or blokes on a stag weekend wearing only a "Borat" thong. And those cautious souls stepping gingerly from their solar-panelled "podpad" chalet-village are no less beguiling.

Purists claim the rot set in with the BBC sponsorship back in the 1990s and a "sanitised" version of the festival was beamed into the comfort and safety of the nation's living-rooms. But why is that any worse than pouring cash into the Emirates Stadium to screen a Premiership tussle for the countless thousands who couldn't find - or afford - a ticket? Or paying Wimbledon to broadcast the action from its Centre Court? I've been to both those places and I'm perfectly aware that the television coverage doesn't intrude - but nor does it capture the atmosphere or the experience. Television can only really give you the headline news. The only way to understand these events it to attend them.

And apart from the eternal conjecture about whether it's reached its tipping point, the Glastonbury headlines tend to be: who won the battle of the main stages? I can tell you this year's results now. The high scorers were Arctic Monkeys, Iggy & the Stooges, Magic Numbers, Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Arcade Fire, Klaxons and Nick Lowe; poor performances from Amy Winehouse and Rufus Wainwright. But the big names are only a tiny percentage of the story, though they're largely responsible for funding everything else. The festival now sprawls across six Somerset farms within an eight and a half-mile steel security fence. The distance from one end to the other is like walking from Marble Arch to Holborn. This land is then divided into self-governing domains - the Circus Field, the Green Field, the Acoustic Stage etc - and each promoter given a budget to put on their own individual show.

Here, in these bordering provinces, whole worlds of entertainment unravel - inimitable, sincere, often so far out as to be completely mystifying. One recent success story is Lost Vagueness, a stretch of landscape with a ballroom full of ska bands and a wedding chapel. On the way up you pass the magnificent Orkestra del Sol, a 12-piece brass band (from Edinburgh) playing riotous Balkan dance tunes in an old aeroplane fuselage.

And just beyond them, a human jukebox - drop in a coin, select a tune and four musicians play it live in a cramped perspex cube - and the Miniscule of Sound, a nightclub the size of a phone booth complete with lights and a glitterball, and seven uniformed bouncers outside barking "Stop barging in, mate", "Can't bring drinks in here, sweetheart", "I said no pictures!" - a brilliant piece of theatre.

The festival is now a gigantic tented city rammed with theatres, restaurants, clubs, cafés, cabarets, shops, sculpture parks, bars, cinemas, even a hospital, a variety of attractions so bizarre and so dazzling that even this year's catastrophic weather couldn't dampen the spirit. Mercifully those forlorn souls wading through the mire with their feet wrapped in plastic bags are now a rare sight - though as the mud dried into claggy ponds, only the match-fit festival-hound could see as much of the show as they wanted.

Every year the place has evolved even further, and 2007's star development was a whole new kingdom called the Park. This is where I found myself at two o'clock on Sunday morning, rammed into a psychedelic tea-room made of canvas and log poles called the Rabbit Hole watching dance technicians the Egg electrify a crowd of people dressed mostly as playing cards or white rabbits. A Cheshire Cat offered us some drinks. A sign on the wall read "Hula Hoops For Sale - ask the Pirate".

Looking round, I couldn't imagine a better band playing a better place to a better crowd anywhere in the Vale of Avalon. But there were thousands of others having exactly the same thought about wherever they were.

And somewhere in the valley below there was doubtless some corporate event that helped pay for it all. Am I bothered?

Mark Ellen is editor of The Word magazine