Festivals are facing a lot of stick right now due to their apparent refusal to book more women for their lineups. Excuses lined up for this have previously included “we’re just honouring bookings cancelled by Covid” and “we can’t find female talent” – as well as the traditional response of taking no notice of what anyone says.

Quite what Southport Weekender’s excuse is for its 2022 event at Butlins Bognor Regis being so male-dominated is unknown. On a lineup with 60-odd acts on it, I counted five women…

Almost laughably predictable now isn’t it? A sausage waving exercise stuck firmly in the 90s… pic.twitter.com/ulgnDOMET8

— KJL (@kerryjeanlister) October 27, 2021

In this case, I’m also wondering whether the people who booked this still think it’s 1995. Do they look out the window and think “hey, that new guy running Labour, Tony Blair, he’s gonna go places!”? Perhaps they switch on their Packard Bell 486 computers in the morning and say to themselves “this Internet thing, it’ll never catch on. Says so here in Newsweek“.

At this rate, mocking festivals really could become a daily feature on this blog…