How a Glastonbury bigwig could yet save the Wickerman Festival

The Wickerman director was found dead at his East Kirkcarswell Farm at Dundrennan with serious head injuries, believed to have been caused by a firearm.

Now it has emerged that behind the scenes, former police superintendent Adrian Coombs, the consultant security director at the Glastonbury Festival for four years and owner of Major Events Boss Limited has been involved in protracted talks to take over the festival.

Mr Coombs has also been a key figure at other festivals including the Boomtown Fair, a Hampshire festival that attracts some 50,000 people every August.

Mr Coombs told one English council in June in a confidential memo seen by the Herald that he had put a consortium together that had purchased the Wickerman and would be delivering its first event in July, 2017.

But Mr Gilroy's widow, Patsy, who with her daughter Jennie Camm decided they could not continue with a direct involvement with event themselves has revealed that delays in finally sealing a deal had led to them making Friday's announcement.

"He doesn't own the Wickerman Festival, no, he absolutely does not. If he had done that we might be in a different position," she said.

Patsy Gilroy and her daughter Jennie Camm 

She said a deadline to finally seal the involvement was missed, so they decided, with pressure to make an announcement about the arrangements for 2017, it was time to call it quits.

But she it was the end "for the time being", that it could yet make a return if someone finally takes it over and revealed there have been talks about a return in 2018.

"We have been waiting for them to come forward to do a contract with them, but it wasn't' forthcoming," she said.

"We waited and waited and had quite a lot of people, loyal supporters who want to come to the festival getting in touch plus people who want to supply the festival and we couldn't say yes or no, and eventually we decided, my daughter and I, that we had to set a time to do this, and say if you haven't got everything in place, then right, we are not going on and that's what happened on Friday.

"We gave them some timelines to get to, we did heads of terms [a set of agreed principles which precede the signing of a negotiated contract] and they didn't make the [deadlines] so I am afraid we had to say that it is not going to happen.

"It was a dilemma, it was done with a heavy heart, but it's just about using one's head at the moment.

"I thought Adrian's lot was going to do it, but sadly they haven't come forward yet. But the door is never bolted. You can never say never.

"We heard from them last week, we did give them the opportunity to respond. They were never going to do 2017. That was off the table way back."

Asked if the farm is still available if someone wanted to take it on, she said: "Absolutely, the site is there, the infrastructure is all there. I haven't got the energy, to be perfectly honest to do it, and my daughter lives in Tanzania so it's kind of not feasible for us. We set it up to be a site for a festival.

"It could be the Wickerman, but it is not at the moment because it is not happening at this moment in time."

The two-day award winning Wickerman Festival, inspired by the cult 1970s film of the same name, has been held at Mr Gilroy's farm 25 miles south west of Dumfries since 2002 when the counter-culture music bash attracted less than 2000 people.

The even, renowned for its traditional burning of a huge wicker man effigy, went on to cater for six times that number.

It went on to attrack big names such as Chic, Texas, Primal Scream, The Charlatans, James,  the Human League, Ocean Colour Scene, Dizzee Rascal and Gary Numan. Mrs Gilroy, a local Conservative councillor, admitted that the costs of putting on the event, including policing, were a factor in the equation as were declining audiences.

Organisers of the award-winning Eden Festival had joined south of Scotland MSP Colin Smyth in objecting to the trebling of police costs for festivals in Dumfries and Galloway, which they say is threatening the future of sustainability of events.

The Wickerman Festival posted a £300,000 loss in 2015 and a net liability of nearly £200,000.

Mrs Gilroy said the first and seemingly, for now, last Wickerman since Mr Gilroy's passing in 2015 featuring singer songwriter Tom Odell and folk rockers The Waterboys was expected to attract 12,000 people - but only only 6000 went through the gates.

"Jamie had just committed suicide, and we thought people would turn out in their droves just to say, 'thank you' and well done, and we didn't get the support," she said.

"It's odd. I just don't know why. We had a change in how we ran it, I thought the line up was good I don't know."

She added: "There is a concern over the volatility of festivals, the numbers going to festivals being down, the profitability being down and the artists have been putting up their prices, it is all a balance and i think they [Mr Coombs' consortium] were nervous and I don't blame them.

"This was new, and it was in Scotland. I do think Adrian thought he could negotiate with the police and I think he was beginning to realise that it was quite a hard ball game and were not able to do that. So that was a problem. We are where we are."

In August, while Wickerman discussions were continuing, a fire destroyed eighty cars at the Boomtown Fair which was headlined by Damian Marley, Madness, Leftfield and Levellers. Mr Coombs said at the time their first priority was to help customers get home and they were helping make sure customers could contact insurance companies during the festival.

Mr Coombs says in a resume that he is also a key figure in Jersey Live, a music and arts weekend event set on Jersey and was the deputy event controller at the 2014 Ryder cup at Gleneagles.

Organisers decided to take a year off in 2016 even though fans had already bought early bird tickets. They received an automatic refund.

The festival had gone through behind-the-scenes upheaval before Mr Gilroy's tragic death, with a number of stalwart organising figures leaving.

Wickerman Festival co-ordinator Helen Chalmers came off the festival board three weeks before Mr Gilroy died.

The same year Chay Woodman, organiser and promoter of the renowned Solus tent established to champion new Scottish music talent at the festival left.

Mr Coombs was approached for comment but didn't respond