Sorry I have joined this a little late and it is a subject about which I (naturally enough) have opinions.

A lady punter I was talking to at Chester folk festival around 1980 made the comment: "we get fed up seeing the same half dozen big names all the time". When the punters get bored with it, the are likely to vote with their feet.

Unfortunately this does not seem to have happened in that people have not voted with their feet. If that were true then festivals would have shrunk since the 1980's. Instead they have expanded and are expanding. Though some have closed like Cleethorpes, others have expanded and many new festival started since then. In other words she was wrong.

Dent where I was last weekend, was a total sell out with a variety of guests. Gate to Southwell - a few weeks ago massive increase in ticket sales. Shepley - a week or two before that - the same. Moniaive a week earlier total sellout. The piping competition had an entry of 72 there. Loughborough a few weeks earlier - the same. And three of them started in the last two years and the other two are five years old. And these are all different types of festivals.

Looking over the guests lists quickly the only constants seem to be Bellowhead (who appeared at two of those festivals). Bellowhead are clearly not a folk club band - but their charges reflect that they have to divide the money by 11 and their fuel costs have rocketed as well.

I have been talking to a couple of artists this past week or so and all of them have commented upon the fact that fuel costs have rocketed.