Teetotal in the Park doesn’t sound like fun

Is the festival bubble fit to burst?

Is the fat lady about to sing, signalling it’s all over for these muddy musical extravaganzas?

Not quite yet, I reckon, but for many a promoter the economic slowdown has flagged up some very worrying signs.

An unseasonal weekend heatwave may have helped a last minute rush in ticket sales for RockNess, near Dores, but that good news wasn’t quite enough to dampen rumours that a rise in costs and an overall downturn in sales could see the sun set on this annual event. It could be that this year’s monster cavalcade might be the last to rock the loch.

T in the Park, Scotland’s undisputed festival champs, have found this year, its 20th, the most challenging to date a fact acknowledged by its bald-headed honcho Geoff Ellis.

They’re rightly leaving nothing to chance, no promotional stone unturned, in their efforts to sell out this year’s event.

Hop Farm in Kent, set up by legendary promoter Vince Power, has already hopped off due to poor sales and, given the number of festivals now dotting the landscape, others are sure to follow.

It’s proof, really, that in these uncertain times, unless you’re a bank boss, politician or head of a football league, you’re not immune to being taken apart by the recession.

One thing guaranteed to kill off any festival is if a proposed booze advertising ban by the state funded charity Alcohol Concern is ever implemented.

Quite apart from the quandary of what we would then call T in the Park TEA in the Park (with scones and jam) or Teetotallers in the Park? any ban would cause serious and long lasting damage to the live music industry as it searched frantically for new headline sponsors.

What the temperance brigade don’t realise, or are too stupid to understand, is that if not for the millions of pounds invested by the drinks trade and brewing giants, there would be no music festivals well, none worth going to see.

It would be a simple case of “No bar, no go, no show”. Not only would promoters suffer but the whole supply chain of third party services (catering, lighting, security, transport, hotels, sound, power and road crew to name but a few) would in turn take a bath, many going down the plughole in the process.

As for the punters and acts, well, who cares what they want? Certainly not nippy sweeties like Alcohol Concern!

Still, all that aside, if a new poll is to be believed then I, a music promoter, have also misunderstood the reasons why music festivals are so popular.

Yes, according to a new study, commissioned by MSN, most punters don’t actually go to festivals for the music at all. And after polling 2,000 festival goers, 47% admitted to “having done something they would never normally do outside a music festival environment”.

A quarter slept with a stranger at a festival, 21% had taken drugs, 13% had been in a fight on site and 10% went to drink heavily. Only 45% actually went for the music!

It’s a finding an esteemed professor of cultural studies from Salford University strongly defended by waffling that: “Historically, carnivals would have a ‘lord of misrule’ who oversaw the revelries and subversion of the ordinary rules of life. Music festivals continue to be places where we can escape reality and subvert the rules.”

Eh? Run that by me again . . .

So there you have it it’s not the music that makes a festival attractive, but all the naughty stuff you can get up to while there. What a surprise.

Hmmm. You should know by now my thoughts on surveys and polls basically the paper they’re written on should be used in festival Portaloos.

However, I admit I’m a little intrigued. My eldest son is currently rocking his socks off at Download in Donnington and I’m beginning to wonder if I should have a wee word about what he got up to when he gets home.

Then again, maybe I already know the answer.

What do you think?