I agree – Gastove session and the other stuff at the GI is a great success and shouldn't be messed with. People have voted with their feet and have made it the place to be to escape the high street. Karen & Dal deserve credit for creating the environment for this to happen, not snubbed by suggesting it is moved.

Clearly the high street is not a popular place for to play for many performers – and because of the audience it becomes necessary/sensible to 'dumb down' the set in order to cope with the 'lowest common denominator' audience. So you end up doing 'American Pie' and are considered a success.

The venues get the audience/customers they deserve – if they are selling beer at £1 a pint, have blaring electronic music, give priority to the football rather than the festival events, then they will attract people who want this sort of thing. A business decision I am sure – times are hard.

I think that more could be made of the castle gardens – a separate marquee instead of funfair? This would give extra quality performance space - Put the funfair on the esplanade. It has been suggested to me that the castle could become a ticket only festival area, which would keep all of the plebs out and the folkies in … sort of what the castle was intended for – pull up the drawbridge, so to speak. Craft and other stalls in the corn exchange are quite limited – is this because of the limitations of space or because of a lack of demand from potential stallholders?