that it was the organisers who suggested it to get his attention. After all, he has complained about the smell before.

Not aware attendance in Belgium is compulsory so why the anger? He's not the only one who has requests in his contract.

A lot of people tired of him years ago.

Many others, including myself, still like the man and enjoy his work.

A staunch animal rights advocate refusing to perform amidst the odour of sizzling flesh is not akin to an able-bodied popstrel refusing to 'do stairs'.

of overpriced greasy burgers at Rock Festivals that's for sure, and I'm not even a veggie.

I wonder if he'll get them to ban beer it being often filtered using fish swim bladders. T'old Mozza's never been the best advert for veggies .

Where does it say that Morrissey made this demand?

about my mate Kev who was offered a hundred quid, by the manager of a local venue, a few years back to work on the load-in for a Morrissey gig. Being a student, he made sandwiches, containing ham and cheese, and toddled down for a days graft with the 'professional' road crew. As they broke for lunch, he sat on a packing case, on his own, in the load-in area and started to eat.

a bloke with a clipboard and a laminate told him he had to leave the premises if there was ham in the sandwich.

I'm sorry - but for fucks sakes...

Kev must have an awful lot of mates.

No meat in the canteen at LIPA? It's only just down the road so I'll set up a burger van outside - I'll make a bloody fortune. Now all I've got to do is learn to drive....

(not the title of a Smiths song although could have been, don't u think?) I refer you to my previous answers re Adele et al: Once again, since it seems to keep having to be said, he's not your mate, your mum or your MP. So his opinions and personality don't matter. He either is/isn't a fine singer and a great lyricist (according to taste), and also possibly a total pain in the backside, so what?

I would make an exception for 'incitement to hatred' etc, but just being faddy about his food seems no more than adding comedy value.

After his band The Smiths break up, Morrissey and his adolescent tendencies relocate from Manchester to Seattle to escape the grief associated with decreasing sales of his records at home and the nagging suspicion from the media that he's a bit of reactionary pillock who makes sensationalist statements to compensate for the lack of creative development in his music. Several years later, Morrissey is desperate for a bacon sarnie with HP sauce and can't sleep. He ends up pouring his heart out on a national radio talk show about his magical and perfect song-writing partnership with Johnny Marr, and how much he still misses him and a fry-up in a greasy spoon in Rusholme. Among the many meedja-types who hears Morrissey's story and falls in love with him is vegan Willem De Smet, a Bruges based concert promoter with a silly pony-tail. De Smet's infatuation with Morrissey's story and by association with Morrissey himself is despite being already engaged to a soya bean. But De Smet's relationship with his straight-laced and uncommunicative soya bean is unlike his dream love life living on a large estate on the west coast of Scotland inventing meat-substitues that can conveniently be packaged for the freezer. He writes to Morrissey proposing they meet atop the main stage at the Vanderhoovenorangeboumhergeasadvebnturesoftintinherculespoirot Festival in Ghent in June 2011. Back in Seattle, Morrissey has received hundreds of letters from vegan activists wanting to meet him and club him to death like a seal and put him in a coma. Despite the open hostility Morrissey is excited by one letter in particular from Bruges and will do whatever he needs to to get his gladioli-smacked arse over to the Vanderhoovenorangeboumhergeasadvebnturesoftintinherculespoirot Festival in Ghent. However, old fashioned Morrissey wants his future gastronomic life to be based on meeting on a festival stage the traditional way: with no meat products within 5 miles of the rendezvous and perhaps a Cross of St.George flag draped over his shoulders. Will magic happen twice in Morrissey's life, and if so will it be with Willem de Smet or will it be with the slient soya bean or with Sandie Shaw?

From the people who brought you The Boy With The Kebab Skewer In His Side and When Morrissey Met Julie Burchill

round these parts

(or should that be tiresome) protesting doesn't leave him a little hoarse, the old nag. Or he might end up in a Belgian sausage himself.

I sighed heavily and rolled my eyes when I saw the story, but it doesn't really bother me because I'm not a fan of horsemeat sausages or Morrisey, so either way, I wouldn't have gone.

But, by god, it's fun isn't it? I want MORE demanding pop stars, not the self-effacing "shucks, I'm just like you."

I loathe Mariah C's image and songs but rather love her for demanding 50 puppies and no stairs. Viva La Diva, I say.

I have to admit I quite like what they've done here.

They could have booked someone else after all.

The horrible greasy gristle (TMFTL) that is festival food should be replaced by healthier eating.

Whilst I admit that Morrissey is a precocious little diva, if he saves a few people's arteries for a day, go him!

(And he's done some great tunes in his time too - ever heard "I Will See You In Far Off Places"? fantastic stuff)

He - if it's even his choice - is wielding what little power he has to make a tiny, tiny part of the world around him that tiny bit better, according to his principles. Good luck to him.

The organisers were interviewed on Studio Brussels Radio, The Lokerse feest was going to have a veggie day amongst it's ten day run anyway this year to line up with the 1 day a week "veggiedag" initiative underway in Belgian cities and being adopted elsewhere in Europe. They also knew this would probably get Moz to agree to play in Lokeren instead of one of the other festivals.

For those who simply can't get through the evening without miscellaneous minced genitals and eyelids in a bun, all stalls outside the venue are not affected, nor are the other 9 nights of the festival.

who will never tire of him..i've met a good many..
when he was officially re-habilitated after his "return" he was formally initiated into rock's pantheon of "legends"..cue the introduction of even more sychophants(sic) to an already seething mass of the uncritical..
seems you get past a certain age and you can do no wrong...
critics are as guilty..morley said "ringleader of the whatevers" was his masterwork..."kill uncle" kicks it's overblown arse before getting out of bed!
i don't want to bore here..suffice to say i've seen him solo around fifty times..and walked out the last time (dundee 2008) having prior had only one other experience i would call negative (aberdeen 2006)..haven't got tickets for latest tour either (first i've missed since 84..smiths included)..
i refuse to write him off though...just needs to sack his band..stop relying on fuckin guitars and get the artwork back to scratch..
(other advice un-typable without unsettling yr legal department)

it's his gig..
read katy perry's rider demands if righteousness be thy sword!!

Morrissey who? Do you mean that bloke out of Men Behaving Badly?

Morrissey being interviewed by Ted Nugent.

Whoever's idea it was it's a bloody good one. I'm sure anyone that chooses to go to the festival can live without meat for a day. I hate the stench of weekend barbecues in the summer and if I had the possibility of banning them I'd do it. I don't go round farting into people's gardens - well, not often - so why do I need to smell their awful stench? If it's a God given right of others to have barbecues and to inflict the smell on me, then it should be Morrissey's / the festival's right to decide not to have them for one day. Even things up a bit.

And if I see one more reference to faddy eating .... look, it isn't faddy eating, it's a choice. If anything vegetarians are less faddy than most people because they've committed to something that they believe in.
Dictionary definition of faddy - "of, having, or involving personal and often transitory whims, esp about food". All the veggies I know have been veggies for decades - hardly a transitory whim.

So, is there a way we can remove all those up arrows from the original post as the organisers were going to do this all along? Nothing to do with Moz as far I can see.

I'm a Morrissey fan. I think your Belgians have had a smart idea to get some popularity. But didn't the mighty Cud sing about a curry-based Mozzer indiscretion back in the 80s?

Almost as strident as vegetarians.

Lovely of you all to come out in your hero's defence. He must be touched.

And good for someone, as Sven Garlic points out, to find out what's really going on before posting.

But that's not nearly as exciting, is it? Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the barbecue grill
Meats and Tripe are on your side
A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the barbecue grill
Meats and Tripe are on your side
While Wild Rice is on mine

So we go outside and we gravely view the cuts
All those animals, all those lives
Where are they now?
With loves, and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived
And then they died
It seems so unfair
I want to cry

You say : "'Baste thrice the pig that's marinated since dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times (Maybe Ramsay/Maybe Oliver )
If you must write recipes
The ingredients you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan"
'Cause there's always someone, somewhere
With a Cookery Show, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

You say : "'Ere long will this spitroast be done"
Words which could only be your own
And then produce the text
From whence was ripped
(Some Supermarket magazine, 2004)

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're happy
And I meet you at the vegan store
Oh, Meats and Tripe are on your side
A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're wanted
And I meet you at the vegan store
Offal and Sweetbreads are on your side
But you lose
'Cause wild mushroom risotto is on mine

Glastonbury and Hop Farm festivals with no catering policies at all...

but that's probably "what they wanted to do"

eh?

but a few years ago there was a C4 documentary about Mozzer who was living in LA at the time, with some pet dogs.
Can you get veggie dogfood?

to some up-market barber in London.
Oh to be sufficiently hirsute to be able to be arsey to barbers.
I have seen Morrisey maybe a dozen times solo, once with The Smiths at Preston on an occasion when he was hit by a missile (a coin I think) and pulled the gig after an admittedly wondrous opening "The Queen Is Dead"
The couple I went to that gig with were also at the Liverpool show some twenty odd years later when he did likewise after someone cobbed a drink at him.
My usual reaction to his gigs, and albums, is of overwhelming anti-climax. He surely rivals Paul Weller in the frequency of having each and every lumpen, clumsy album release acclaimed by all and sundry as "a long overdue return to form" or "definitely his best since Vauxhall And I/Stanley Rd" etc
Gigs are usually very, very short and his band are often disappointingly the most unsubtle, colourless bunch of pub-rock plodders imaginable
Thankfully the aforementioned Andy and Wendy have finally weighed up my devotion isn't as great as theirs and no longer include an automatic ticket purchase for me in their still-frequent preparations for his shows.

Look I have the utmost admiration for anyone good enough to get up and play music in public, something I could never have dreamed of doing with my lack of talent.
But my memory of the one song the Smiths played the one time I saw them is of Johnny Marr's wah-wah and general guitar maelstrom to kick "The Queen Is Dead" into overdrive. Wondrous.
My memory of Boz from the 10 or 11 times I've seen Mozzer solo are.....well, nothing really.
A bloke playing songs I recognise but with no...embellishment, detail, embroidery.
I got a similar feeling when I saw Lou Reed - his band were obviously red hot but after the gig I felt I had heard wonderful songs beaten and bludgeoned into submission, played too hard, too fast, too heavy-handedly.
While Boz is undoubtedly a fine musician and chap, I doubt he would even have ever made any of those "100 Most Influential Guitarists Of The Past Fortnight" polls at any stage of his career.

Look I have the utmost admiration for anyone good enough to get up and play music in public, something I could never have dreamed of doing with my lack of talent.
But my memory of the one song the Smiths played the one time I saw them is of Johnny Marr's wah-wah and general guitar maelstrom to kick "The Queen Is Dead" into overdrive. Wondrous.
My memory of Boz from the 10 or 11 times I've seen Mozzer solo are.....well, nothing really.
A bloke playing songs I recognise but with no...embellishment, detail, embroidery.
I got a similar feeling when I saw Lou Reed - his band were obviously red hot but after the gig I felt I had heard wonderful songs beaten and bludgeoned into submission, played too hard, too fast, too heavy-handedly.
While Boz is undoubtedly a fine musician and chap, I doubt he would even have ever made any of those "100 Most Influential Guitarists Of The Past Fortnight" polls at any stage of his career.

..assuming that's your thing :

http://louderthanwar.com/blogs/hear-three-new-morrissey-songs-here