Bob Shields

WANTED: A Scottish venue that is suitable for staging one of the biggest music festival weekends in Britain and capable of attracting some of the best bands and artistes in the world.

WHY?: The organisers of ‘ T in the Park’ – Scotland’s biggest music festival for over two decades – have postponed next year’s event at Strathallan Castle due to “site restrictions”.

Their decision leaves a potential 100,000 music fest fans all wellied up with no place to go!

And the promoters are rumoured to be looking for an alternative site to stage a slimmed down and easier to manage version of the original.

WHO NEED APPLY: Well... anyone can, really. But if you’ve got excellent road, rail and even air transport facilities, plenty of hotels and accommodation, lots of space for camping and caravanning and – oh, I almost forgot – one of the biggest and best equipped racecourses in Britain – you’ve already got a furlong start on any of your rivals!

What’s that? Do I hear a whisper about late night noise level restraints? Well... many festivals have a 10pm finish these days – to soothe concerns of residents and make transport easier.

“T on the Turf – Ayr Racecourse – 2017”. Yaeh, it’s a bit of kite flying and wishful thinking – but, heck... why not?

Well, the biggest ‘ why not’ is if no- one gets off their backside and actually does something about it.

And doing something about it means getting four groups of people around the same table – and soon:

DF Promotions - the Scots based events company who put it all together;

Tennents Lager – the main sponsors of the event;

Ayr Racecourse - the potential host venue;

South Ayrshire Council – the host authority who will have to sign off all kinds of licence and planning applications.

What would have to be agreed as soon as they sat down is that this event would NOT be another ‘ T in the Park’.

Last year’s event attracted 225,000 people with 70,000 of them as resident campers. Ayr Racecourse couldn’t even look at those numbers.

But if the organisers are looking for a “one off” event to keep the ‘ T’ in continuity – Ayr and Ayr Racecourse have a lot