First, you'll be happy to know that Reading Beerex wasn't as muddy as all that, and it sold out of 158 kinds of cider and perry, and didn't quite sell out of beer.
The Saturday was warm and sunny so despite increased site capacity people were queueing three hours to get in. This year's new policy was "NO drinking in the queue"; we could see how effective that was by the quantity of Fosters/Strongbow/Stella tinnies that rolled under the site fence. There weren't enough stewards to police the queue, so many of these citizens queued in vain, as they were drunk on arrival at the gate and were refused admission. Why didn't they just picnic under a tree beside the Thames?
Some other local residents arrived sober but weren't there for the beer. If you have a load of forged £20 notes which you'd like to change for rather less (but legitimate) money, why not go to a huge, amateur-run, poorly-lit outdoor event? Then you pay for a half with a £20 note, put the change in a different pocket, pay for a go on the games with a £20 note, etc. That's until you hand a forged £20 note to someone whose day job is at De La Rue. "As soon as it touched my fingers I knew it wasn't one of mine". The punter was followed by stewards to his next purchase, then escorted off the site and handed over to the Express Taxi Service (ie the one with the flashing lights). Apparently he was already wanted in connection with a fight between two gangs in the town the previous night.
Next day the Plod were back, to collect a wallet the stewards had found. When they opened it to look for identification they found lots of little packets of some kind of white powder. Of course we don't allow that sort of thing on site: we sell intoxicants, you can't bring your own!