Gay men supposedly don't listen to anything except girl bands and disco fromage, so assembling the lineup for the second annual Big Gay Out should have been a breeze. If it took longer than 10 minutes, it must have been because the promoters were arguing about issues that no other festival has to consider. Do we have enough semi-derelict 1980s pop titans? If we let Peter Andre do a couple of numbers, can girlfriend Jordan be coerced on stage for some klutzy banter? How many solo Atomic Kittens are far too many?

Yes, yes and one are the answers, which prompts another question, one that presented itself from the start. Where's the festival for the majority of gay men, whose last CD purchase wasn't Now That's What I Call a Pink Leather Stereotype? There's a business opportunity there, catering for the millions who wouldn't set foot in Big Gay Out because of the dismal prospect of - for example - hearing a skimpy-skirted Kitten blurt out a song called Don't Fuck With Me. (Which, by the way, was simply foul-mouthed and petulant.)

The order of the day was brief PAs, the kind of thing that works fantastically at London's GAY club at 2am, but less so in broad daylight, when there are 15 glittery acts waiting their turn. Dance randoms such as Gina G passed in a flurry of tinsel. Wearing a casino-boss orange suit, Tony Christie spent a long time asking the way to Amarillo.

Goldfrapp were wasted, tucked away on a side stage. The Human League had a spark of nostalgic magic, but Bananarama taxed the patience with "our new single". It took the youngest act, Girls Aloud, to come up with the right mix of tunes and bad-girl suggestiveness. Most of it, sadly, made you want to run far away, to a grove of plastic shrubs that had been christened The Enchanted Forest of David Hasselhoff.