No Rock And Roll Fun

MEAN LEANER?: There's been quite a lot of excitement at the latest Mean Fiddler annoucements, with their announcement at the same time of their plans to take their successful festival format to Europe, but they still made a loss of GBP8.3m in 2002. They've been flogging off the loss-making bits of the business - including the radio experiment (which didn't last long) - so maybe they've decided to concentrate on what they do best. But much as we'd kind of like to see a strong Fiddler group to provide a buttress against Clear Channel, we're not sure that trying to cram more festivals into an overcrowded European schedule is the way ahead. But I guess they now what they're doing. (Apart from that Radio business.)