Photo: Press
Legendary comedian Stewart Lee has spoken out about the rumours surrounding the potential cancellation of the ATP All Tomorrow's Parties festival he has curated.
Yesterday, fear spread among fans after the venue of Pontins in Prestatyn told customers that 'organisers had cancelled the event', leading to confusion when ATP responded that this was due to a 'miscommunication' and that both Lee's event and the All Tomorrow's Parties curated by Drive Like Jehu would 'go ahead as planned'.
Since then ATP have since confirmed that both events will definitely be taking place at Pontins - but not before Lee spoke to The Quietus about his own hopes and fears.
"At the moment, of course it's terrifying for people," said Lee. "It's not great for me either, to be honest. You know, I've got a babysitter, I've made plans, so in that respect I'm in the same boat as everyone else. I didn't sleep last night, I thought I was gonna have a stroke or something. I suppose the way these things work is that ATP hoped that whatever good reputation I might have would become attached to the event... but the other side of that is that when things go bad, that becomes attached to me!
"The one time I do something like this, it would just be typical if it goes wrong. But I hope it goes ahead. I'd like to see that line-up happen."
Speaking of when he heard the news and rumours for the first time, Lee said: "I got in about half four yesterday, and I saw on the internet that someone had got a screen-grab of a thing from Pontin's, saying 'The organiser has cancelled this event'. Well, the organiser won't have cancelled the event. So that must be a standard thing that goes out from Pontin's if there's some sort of problem. Which is probably a problem about payment, or something like that. A debt for the rent. It's now five past twelve the next day, and it's unlikely that anybody in the Pontin's office will have started dealing with it before about 11.00am, so we don't really know anything about it. Barry [Hogan, of ATP] said there'd be a statement from Pontin's about it this afternoon.
"The other thing is that there won't be anyone at Pontin's who knows what ATP is. They've just got a booking for the weekend, and for all they know, it's a bowls weekend. They won't know or care that someone's coming from Texas, or something. So it's a bit difficult to find out what the problem is. But, added to that, I can see why people's alarm bells are ringing, given that he's cancelled two events."
In 2014, the ATP-curated Jabberwocky Festival was also cancelled at the last minute, causing much frustration and many complaints from fans that were awaiting refunds and bands had arranged to play.
