Big Chill Festival cancelled (From Hereford Times)

Big Chill Festival 2012 cancelled to avoid London Olympics

1:12pm Thursday 19th January 2012 in Ledbury By Lauren Rogers

THIS year's Big Chill Festival has been cancelled.

Making an announcement on the festival's website today (January 19), Festival Republic managing director Melvin Benn said the 2012 event, due to take place at Eastnor Castle in Ledbury from August 2 to 5, has been called off to avoid clashing with the Olympics.

Benn said: "It is with a considerable amount of regret that I have decided not to go ahead with The Big Chill in 2012.

"I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend.

"Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year.

"Efforts are being made to look to bring a smaller event indoors this year with the anticipation of Big Chill being back outdoors in 2013.”

The Big Chill has been held at Eastnor Castle's deer park for more than a decade.

Previous headliners have included Kanye West, the Chemical Brothers, Leonard Cohen, Massive Attack, and Lily Allen.

• More than 300 people voted in the above Big Chill ballot which closed yesterday (January 22). Some 144 of you said you would prefer to be at the Big Chill festival, while 43 voted for the London 2012 Olympics and 123 people opted for neither.