TRNSMT’s success on the Green means the T party is over

Take out the tented battleground for a safe festival

IT was music to my ears, as it was to the 120,000 attendees to hear that Scotland’s newest music festival, TRNSMT, was a resounding success.

Held over three days last weekend on Glasgow Green, the headliners were Radiohead, Kasabian and Biffy Clyro.

There were 110 other artistes including big names such as Twin Atlantic, Stormzy, The Kooks, The LaFontaines, and Belle & Sebastian.

TRNSMT was so successful, both in terms of public safety and financially, adding more than £10 million to the local economy, that a decision was immediately taken to hold another festival next year.

TRNSMT tickets have already gone on sale and it was no surprise to then hear that there are no current plans for T In The Park in 2018.

That news will be welcomed, I’m sure, by a few deaf-eared Auchterarder residents and mischief-making nimbys.

And, of course, a pair of nesting ospreys.

But it’s the correct decision, given the problems that had blighted the two previous T In The Park events.

As a clearly delighted Geoff Ellis, boss of promoters DF Concerts, said: “The beauty about running a gig like this is you don’t have to be running a campsite and you’re not having to deal with traffic issues – or birds of prey”.

In other words, if you take out their tented battleground, you can have a perfectly safe and trouble-free festival.

And so, it proved last weekend. Something that sadly, I reckon, still can’t be achieved at T In The Park.

It had become too big, and had been taken over by the musically-illiterate neds and bams, only interested in getting mad with it and causing trouble.

However, Geoff Ellis also says that not having a T In The Park next year doesn’t mean it’s the end for this once great musical event.

A festival, at one time so popular up to 70,000 people a day would attend, and which in 2015 was valued at generating more than £15 million to the national economy and £3million locally will return, but will be aimed at an older market.

I wouldn’t rush, Geoff. Why give yourself the grief?

You have another big event to concentrate on and, even though it’s early days, it’s going to be a very successful festival, welcomed by Glasgow, a UNESCO city of Music.

Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken has said is vital to the city’s tourism and leisure industries, which support tens of thousands of jobs.

One that is easy for the music lover to get to and the neds are kept well away from, a festival that is less stressful and easier to run and manage and one that does indeed, as my club’s tills testified last weekend, gives everyone a much-needed rub of the green.

It’s called TRNSMT so why bother at all with T In The Park?

In one showing TRNSMT has, like Belladrum, Rewind and Summer Nights got its name established and found its true home.

One things for sure, if TRNSMT does remain at Glasgow Green, some local businesses might want to review their dress code if they wish to have green day at their tills.

I heard that one night club stupidly refused entry to punters wearing the footwear festivalgoers everywhere wear – wellies.