EDIT, 2nd Dec: I’ve just had a very courteous email from the lovely Aimee Hardwick, Promotions Manager at the Barfly, saying she was dismayed to read that we had a problem here. It transpires from her email that the chap with the sniffy attitude wasn’t a regular Barfly staff member – so my flagging up here of this one grumpy hired hand really shouldn’t put other promoters off this venue. I’ll also note that the rest of the staff were lovely and very accommodating. Aimee suggests that I could have mentioned this problem at the time, but it honestly wasn’t that big of an issue, and it’s also my feeling that during a live event you have to simply get on with things unless a problem is serious, which this certainly wasn’t. Indeed, if he’d been tetchy with me myself I wouldn’t have really minded – grouchy techies come with the turf – but in this case I felt a sense of protectiveness over the musicians who I’d invited to come and play Birmingham for the first time.