Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis has come out in strong praise for all those involved in this year's "sold out" festival at a press conference on Monday morning.

Inevitably though, questions largely focused around on Saturday night's headline performance, Jay-Z.

Labelling it a "fantastic" performance, Eavis seemed genuinely pleased the hip hop star had defied press expectation and been "a triumph of a show".

In particular, Eavis took time to mention enjoying the tongue-in-cheek opening to Jay-Z's set - a video montage of the various press headlines and celebrity surrounding the rapper's appearance, a move Eavis called "inspired".

He went on to assure that hip hop artists would continue to have a presence at the festival but wouldn't be headlining next year. "You can't do the same thing twice can you?," he said.

Eavis also took time to praise Amy Winehouse. "She was on brilliant form, wasn't she?," he stated before moving on to recognise her health concerns.

Yet Eavis was also quick to defend miss Winehouse over an alleged incident involving her hitting a man attempting to fondle her as she reached into the crowd.

Speculating about the event he said, "well, wouldn't you?" and laughed the incident off as "a Prescott situation".

In terms of the running of the festival, there was mixed new in terms of its financial and administrative success.

Though Eavis confirmed the credit crunch and fuel prices had pushed up the cost of diesel by around £160,000 for the festival, he noted around half a million pounds had been saved through restructuring of the clean-up operation.

However, on the subject of the festival's big environmental initiative, new eco-friendly bio-degrable tent pegs, Eavis had to agree to being less successful, having only used half of them.

"It's a shame - we had wall to wall sunshine for five days before the event which was wonderful... the ground was just too hard," Eavis said.

He did agree though that the new pegs had raised awareness: "People know now to count their tent pegs back into their tent bags".

As for ticket sales, Eavis welcomed that it had taken so long for tickets to sell out. He explained: "It means people can come if they want to come... it means they can make their minds up, not in a two hour window" - the standard sell out time for the festival.

Eavis has also confirmed that the festival will take a break in two years time to allow for some rest.