Kanye West stage invasion by Lee Nelson divides Glastonbury fans

Comedian Lee Nelson caused a bit of a storm last night when he invaded the Glastonbury stage to disrupt Kanye West’s performance.

“Was that Lee Nelson?” wondered thousands of music fans as they sat open-mouthed at the brief intrusion by a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word LEE-ZUS.

Not long later Nelson confirmed that it was indeed him:

Some people were saying Kanye shouldn't headline Glastonbury so I thought I'd give him a hand. pic.twitter.com/7KFk2kgjsM

— Lee Nelson (@RealLeeNelson) June 27, 2015

Nelson, real name Simon Brodkin, came on to the Pyramid stage during the rapper’s fourth song Black Skinhead and larked around before being swiftly wrestled away by a security guard. (Nelson/Brodkin has form with this sort of thing: last year he managed to sneak into a photograph with the England football team before last year’s World Cup in Brazil).

Some liked it:

Take a bow Lee Nelson…….

— Geoff Beer (@geoffbeero) June 28, 2015

Some were a little irritated:

I see Lee Nelson is still utterly desperate to get famous again. Career now made of jumping security. WELL DONE you. #Glastonbury

— Andy Martindale (@AndyMartindale) June 28, 2015

And comedian Janey Godley suggested she wouldn’t mind giving her fellow comic a taste of his own medicine one day:

I want to invade a Lee Nelson gig and actually do stand up just to shock him

— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) June 27, 2015

Comedy actress Rebecca Front reminded people that Kanye had form when it comes to stage invasions:

Kanye is more used to being the stage invader than dealing with one. Lee Nelson could have told him to hand the microphone to Beyoncé.

— Rebecca Front (@RebeccaFront) June 27, 2015

New Top Gear host Chris Evans was a little non-plussed:

In garage. Dreamt Kanye West headlined Glasto last nt and caused a right bun fight on Twitter. In other news,do like the new heels on my van

— Chris Evans (@achrisevans) June 28, 2015

Comedian Mark Steel appeared to be speaking for a lot of Glastonbury watchers when he suggested this:

I wonder if anyone else in the world has noticed there’s a side to Kanye West that could, in certain circumstances, be a bit irritating.

— Mark Steel (@mrmarksteel) June 27, 2015

Clearly someone thought so.

And if you want to know exactly how Twitter opinion fell among the 76,000 or so tweets about Kanye West’s performance last night using a new method of social media analysis, we can tell you.

Research compiled by Oxford University’s Dr Karo Moilanen, CTO and co-founder of TheySay Ltd – a new state-of-the art linguistics tool which does this sort of thing and even measures human emotions like sarcasm – revealed that 44% were “supportive” of West’s Glasto spectacular and 56% were “haters” of his performance.

However, negative sentiment appeared to be much stronger on Twitter than amongst the actual audience, according to the research.