Adam Miller: Lessons must be learned and changes made after those TRNSMT queues

Firstly, a 748% increase in Scottish news articles featuring the word ‘revellers’.

That noun will shortly be placed back into the drawer, tucked away in hibernation before its next outing at Hogmanay when ‘revellers’ in Edinburgh’s Princes Street ‘throng’ the ‘main thoroughfare’. 

Secondly, it ensured that said ‘revellers’ would be treated with contempt.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical, and £9.50 is in fact a completely reasonable price for a single vodka and Red Bull. 

More serious than the alcohol prices - yes, more serious than £6.50 for a pint of 3.8% Carlsberg - was the situation that unfolded outside the venue on Saturday. 

Fans were forced to queue up for hours in the afternoon sun during a heatwave, with no water or shade. Many missed acts they had paid to see, including Wet Leg. Some even gave up completely and headed home. 

Numerous accounts on Twitter claimed there were no stewards overseeing the queues, with many complaining that no water was handed out in the heat despite attendees being told to show up with empty water bottles. 

Because no-one was hospitalised, the worst those responsible will have to endure is a couple of articles like this and some angry tweets before the fuss dies down until next year. The fact that the weekend passed without someone being taken seriously ill, however, should not mean this gets forgotten about. 

Depending on whether it was a day or weekend pass, a standard ticket would have cost between £80 and £175. For that money, it shouldn’t be a case of ‘bl*ody TRNSMT, what they like?’ and the same thing happening next year. There must be apologies issued, lessons learned and changes made.

There’s absolutely no excuse for people who’ve paid good money for admission to end up risking dehydration for hours in a queue.

Come to think of it, it might be the only way to ensure punters are actually willing to part with £6.80 for a cider. 

Speaking of festivals, Tory leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt this week took time out from featuring convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius in her campaign video to cite Glastonbury while complaining that the Conservative Party has “lost its sense of self”. 

She told supporters: “When Paul McCartney was playing his set, we indulged all those new tunes, but the thing we really wanted was the good old stuff that we knew all the words to.”

I was in that Glastonbury audience and can confirm that the self-indulgent timewaster played a mere 26 songs by the biggest band in the history of recorded music. He also somehow expected his audience to be impressed by guest appearances from such no-marks as Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen. 

The night’s low point arrived when 100,000 confused spectators were forced to simultaneously Google the ‘na na na na na na na’ lyrics of rarely-heard obscurity Hey Jude. 

Last week saw the sad passing of Tony Sirico, who racked up dozens of film and television credits but will primarily be remembered for his iconic performance as Paulie Gualtieri in The Sopranos. 

His death came weeks after the 15th anniversary of that show’s classic ending. Like everyone else, I watched the abrupt fade to black and thought there was something wrong with my TV. 

That ambiguous conclusion is now considered one of the great finales, with American culture website The Ringer suggesting that it “may be the most deconstructed four minutes in television history”.

Fifteen years on I’m still relieved I got to see it without first reading about it on social media, as I almost certainly would in 2022.

With Bebo and Myspace the era’s dominant social networks, the biggest spoiler you risked encountering was learning you’d been removed from a contact’s top eight friends before you’d logged on. Now, there’s no escape. 

Fail to catch the new episode the minute it’s on Netflix and you’re done for. Mute the key words on Twitter and the algorithm will still throw a revealing headline onto your Facebook feed. If a Stranger Things episode features a character being killed by a bee, some smarta**e subeditor will headline a newspaper’s review ‘Killer Stranger Things twist leaves sting in the tail as Netflix hit lives up to buzz’. 

I’m speaking as someone who only started writing this after avoiding Twitter until I’d finished the latest Better Call Saul episode. This after seeing a headline along the lines of ‘Better Call Saul actor on his memorable moment in new episode’ and thinking ‘B*****d, now I know he has a memorable moment’.

In the scheme of things, having plot points ruined for you is not exactly the worst thing that can happen. Anyone who still remembers the first time they saw Se7en, The Sixth Sense or Tony Soprano tucking into onion rings at a diner will tell you, though, knows being blindsided by an expertly crafted twist is one of life’s simple little pleasures. 

As for those who deliberately post spoilers, Paulie said it best: “You’re weak, you’re out of control, and you’ve become an embarrassment to yourself and everybody else.”