If we’re now meant to be living in an age where we’re all inclusive and try our best to make everyone feel welcome, regardless of who or what they are, someone clearly forgot to tell the festivals what was going on. This particularly conservatively minded sector of the music business has always been a bit pale, male and stale.

More fanciful types would have you believe at the start of the pandemic that this would be the jolt they’d need to bring themselves at least a little closer to the modern era. Yet with many festivals left nearly bankrupt by Covid restrictions, they’ve resorted to filling their lineups with as many big names as possible.

And dance music isn’t immune to this. A while ago, I covered the Southport Weekender’s event in Butlins Bognor Regis in March and couldn’t help but notice it was, as one friend crudely put it, “all sausage and no stuffing”. I’ve now come across the Clock Stock festival – you wouldn’t want to try saying that after you’d had a few, would you?

Two thoughts come to mind on seeing this flyer. The first is that the designer is some whippersnapper type who obviously spent too much of their youth creating those ghastly customised MySpace backgrounds back in the day.

And second is the fact the lineup is, well, very pale, male and stale indeed. There’s very little diversity on the lineup – and what little there is consists of the likes of Alison Limerick, there to sing the one song of hers that everyone actually remembers. Which is a shame, because she released quite a few belters in the nineties.

Whilst the rest of us are praying post-Omicron times are with us sooner rather than later, the festivals appear to be finding solace in going back further in time…