Festival fans desperate for the last few tickets to the music event have told of their ordeal in the ‘horror queue’.

Thousands of festival-goers were penned in like cattle and crushed to the point of collapse as they fought desperately to get the last few remaining passes to the sold-out event on Wednesday.

Teenagers were fainting with exhaustion as they stood for up to 12 hours to get to the front of the line by Thames Promenade at Caversham Bridge, some arriving at 1am.

Streams of complaints flooded in from angry parents, some of whom had been down to the site at around 9.30pm on Wednesday to try to get food and water to their children.

A number of tickets were released by event organiser Festival Republic but it refused to confirm how many were being issued.

Information on what time the box office opened and how many tickets available was fuelled by word-of-mouth and there was no information given on Wednesday to the thousands of hopefuls.

Danielle Davis, 18, from The Avenue, Mortimer, had to leave after queuing from 3am for 13 hours.

She said: “I am just devastated. It was disgusting that they treated us like that, there was no food, no water, no toilet and we were crammed in like animals.

“It was hard to breathe. People were pushing and shoving and there was no one saying anything about what was going on.

“My friend collapsed and they told us if we left the queue, we could not get back in so we had to leave.”

Clive Wraght from Earley had bought a ticket for his 18-year-old son Steve on the internet but was left ticketless after being stung by an unauthorised site.

His son had to queue for more than 15 hours on Wednesday to get a new one.

Mr Wraght said: “There was no food or water so I had to take some down to him.

“When I got there he was completely zoned out and couldn’t really speak. He had already been there on his feet for 12 hours at that time.

“I think it is atrocious that the organisers allowed that to happen. Steve has now got his ticket and he is happy, but he said it was the worst day of his life.”

Patsy Sheriff, 47-year-old mother of Natalie, 18, from Caversham Park Village, queued from 6.30am to 9.30pm to get her daughter’s ticket with her brother Bill Lacey.

She said: “It was appalling. There was no system, people were pushing and shoving, and because you were penned in a field rather than a queue, some people from the back were pushing in front of people who had been there since 1am.

"I am never doing that again, it was just dangerous.”

Jade Gibbons, 17, from Marlow, had turned up at 6am to get her weekend ticket with seven of her friends. She got her pass 13 hours later at 7pm.

Her mother Hilary was furious. She said: “The stewards were teasing them, eating burgers and chips and smirking as these thousands of kids were starving and thirsty. I phoned the press office myself last night to complain, and the woman told me they weren’t selling any more tickets.

"This was at 6pm and my daughter bought her ticket an hour later – she didn’t have a clue what was going on.

“My daughter’s friend collapsed and all the steward did was pull her out, give her a bit of water, and throw her back in again.

“I am not letting this go, I demand to know that this will not happen again – they are lucky no one was killed.”