Is there any actual example of a festival gettong strangled in the lianas of a parasitic fringe? I can't think of one.

Whereas some festivals seem to have made sure no fringe ever developed - Lorient, Tonder, Cambridge, anywhere based on a supersized marquee in a field - they have all ended up as highly successful commercial enterprises I have no intention of ever patronizing.

Others (Whitby, Sidmouth, and from what I've heard, the National in Australia) have a multifarious fringe which interacts in a whole lot of positive ways with the "official" one. They seem to have set themselves on that course very early on and would be nuts to try to change it. Particularly not at the whim of an anonymous self-righteous trolling whiner who nobody here has ever seen at any folk event.