MAN, it’s hard, getting ready to meet Greta Thunberg. She’s like an instant ethics audit mirror on legs – 10 minutes before I meet her, I have to Google to see if my (secondhand) top was created in a sweatshop, chuck my half-finished can of hangover-curing Diet Coke in a bin and fret if it’s obvious that my Doc Martens boots are the leather ones rather than the far more acceptable vegan options.
I do my first interview with Greta at Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England, in June, because we both happen to be there. She is to give a landmark speech to 250 000 people about instigating organised public intervention on global warming. Me to drink cider and see Sugababes.
This is the only point in our schedules we can manage it – Greta (19) lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and won’t give interviews to anyone who’s flown out to see her. It’s absolutely fair that her principles mean you can only travel to see her if you’ve gone by rail or electric car.
Personally, I would happily walk to see her as I think she’s astonishing – by some measure one of the most galvanising figures of the past 100 years. But it’s actually easier to make my way on foot through the warren of backstage dressing rooms and tents – past loitering Kate Mosses and Bruce Springsteens – and find her half an hour before her unannounced special appearance on the Pyramid stage, which later makes world headlines.
I sit in her empty dressing room waiting for her. What is she going to be like, this droll
