It could have been so much better than this. This was the route out of Covid that clubbers desperately needed. A way of establishing that club culture and night life could resume once more, and resume safely. Yousef signed up willingly – perhaps seeing the opportunity in more ways than one.

The two nights were written about extensively, receiving coverage so glowing in Mixmag that their writers will soon be recruited to write for Rodong Sinmun. I was critical of the use of plague rave favourite Sven Väth, but largely looking forward to seeing the outcome – this was a test event for the Events Research Programme, after all.

Early leaks were promising. Only a handful of cases had been found. But how many of the attendees had actually completed PCR tests ahead of and after the event like they’d been requested to? I expected, given the clamour for clubbing to return, that the numbers doing so would be high.

And now we have the data. Released last Friday afternoon to distract journalists who were asking too many questions about Matt Hancock for the government’s liking, they reveal that 7012 people were present across the two nights. And here’s the results…

That’s right, your eyes don’t deceive you. Only 464 people bothered to do the two tests, and 3 cases were discovered. 7% of Friday night’s crowd got them done, and that fell even lower to 6% on Saturday night.

Shame on the Events Research Programme for failing to make this a compulsory part of attendance, and shame on those people who went there and seemingly couldn’t be arsed doing their bit to get clubs and a large chunk of the night time economy going again. Pathetic barely covers it…

By The Editor

Editor-in-chief at Amateur’s House.