'Fantasist' promised music stars for festival that never happened

BBC News

2 days ago

It boasted a line-up of bands including The Killers, Pulp, Def Leppard, Wet Leg and The Libertines.The 45,000 capacity three-day event was due to be held this August bank holiday and was billed as the world's first hydrogen-powered music festival.But there was a snag: It was based on lies.A BBC News investigation has uncovered how "fantasist" and convicted fraudster James Kenny planned a make-believe festival from his elderly mum's kitchen that pulled Glastonbury headliners, Hollywood stars and even a country's government into its orbit.After we tracked Mr Kenny down he insisted he intended for the festival to go ahead, adding he was "truly sorry" to those who had lost money.
Many we've spoken to say the festival industry is brimming with characters like Mr Kenny, full of big ideas and grand plans. So when the bar manager who ran hotels and a nightclub in Liverpool pitched a multi-million pound festival bigger than Latitude, claiming funding from investors such as the co-founder of restaurant chain Leon John Vincent, industry insiders thought he might just be able to pull it off.But as time went on, employees and suppliers who had been "100% convinced" told us they then started to question if it was real.
"It was a festival made of paper," one former employee said."Everything kind of unravelled and I realised it doesn't exist for anybody else but him."Some now believe Mr Kenny never intended for his ambitious festival to happen - deposits weren't paid for bands, licence applications were never made and investors he claimed to be talking to say they have never heard of him.So how did a festival built on lies get so far?Monmouth Rising was due to be held on a leafy showground outside the Welsh border town - a space more used to hosting Saturday morning car boot sales than festivals with five stages.Festival literature boasted affordable tickets, cashless payments and a "commitment to inclusivity" with no VIP areas.
At a packed town hall meeting in February, the 47-year-old showed detailed site maps he claimed had been designed with the same software used to plan the Paris Olympics.BBC Radio Wales would broadcast the festival live and a cannon would even fire bacon butties into the campsite in the mornings, or so he claimed.
He told prospective employees that investors included "one of the founders of Creamfields" and said an economic impact assessment from the Welsh government showed the festival would bring £28.9m into the area.One industry insider said: "I have worked in the industry for 20 years and it is really, really unheard of to do a festival that big for the first time."The man, who supplied services for the festival and didn't want to be named for fear of missing out on future jobs, added: "It's embarrassing [that I believed him], but in this industry you want someone to be a bit crazy."
Idris Elba DJ sets
Employees and suppliers talk of a secretive culture Mr Kenny built up: Headline acts weren't being announced and no-one knew how many tickets had been sold.Music producer Chris Whitehouse was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement before creating a soundtrack for the festival's advert to be "voiced" by Idris Elba, who - he was told by Mr Kenny - would also DJ at the festival alongside dance headliners Groove Armada and Whigfield. But Chris said things didn't add up."These guys apparently have an £8m budget to do this music festival and he looks like he's just walked out of Wetherspoons," he said.Chris hasn't been paid for his work and has issued court proceedings against Mr Kenny for breach of contract.Elba's agent said there was, "no record of Idris doing anything for this man" and Groove Armada and Whigfield said they were never booked.
Genevieve Barker is one of the few people Mr Kenny let into these secretive conversations."He'd say 'oh my gosh we've got this band, but don't tell anyone'," she recalled.Having spent time raising her five children, the marketing and events specialist in Monmouth felt "lovebombed" into leaving her job to be head of partnerships for the festival."I'd spent the best part of 16 years raising children," she said. "If you've always been working part time or a stay-at-home parent, this was the career move of a lifetime."She said the "larger than life" businessman offered her more money than she'd ever made, as well as a pension and private dental and healthcare cover for her family.But after she started working for the festival, she said it was, "like a toxic relationship".She added: "He made us feel really special, dangled a couple of carrots, but then isolated us. He never encouraged us to talk as a group unless he was there."
Another Monmouth Rising employee works for festivals over the summer. As a part-time carer she said she jumped at the chance for a longer-term gig working from home.She does not want to be named for fear of not getting work in a struggling industry that is "already difficult for older women".She says that a 10-minute job interview saw Mr Kenny run through "loads of bands that he was in talks with, so fast that I couldn't write them down. Then he said yes to everything I asked for".
Various suppliers also told us they provided thousands of pounds worth of work and were promised thousands more in future. The BBC has seen WhatsApp chats where Monmouth Rising's employees spoke excitedly about the plans.But, out of the blue in late February, a new message appeared.
"Where is our pay?"Employees had woken up to find they had not received their first pay packet.The festival's website was down and they couldn't access work emails. The Loyalty Co founder Adam Purslow said his firm built the website at a cut-price rate for his "serial entrepreneur" friend Mr Kenny.After numerous requests for payment, Adam pulled the website when his team were presented with a "fishy" looking document as proof of incoming funding."All the suppliers started to question how genuine that whole thing was," he said.Employees like Genevieve had mortgages, rent and nursery bills to pay. In response to her desperate appeals, Mr Kenny sent her videos, filmed in his mum's home where he was living, claiming he was "literally just waiting" for money to come in.
BBC Wales has discovered this money Mr Kenny was promising was a £90,000 cash advance, known as invoice funding. But it was turned down because it failed due diligence checks.This was because an invoice from train company GWR, which Mr Kenny handed over as proof of incoming funds, was flagged as a potential forgery.GWR said it was unable to match the invoice to its records and "immediately reported" its suspicions to British Transport Police.It is not the only alleged forged document Mr Kenny appears to have relied upon.Mr Kenny previously tried and failed to deliver a city-wide cocktail festival and a similar pattern of promises and alleged forgeries followed in its wake.
In 2021 he started working for Kate and James, a couple who ran a cocktail bar in Chester and did backstage catering for celebrity-packed events such as the National Television Awards (NTAs).The couple, who now live in Morocco, said Mr Kenny "always liked shiny things" and was excited when they invited him to work at the NTAs, although "the reality is, it's hard work and you're just clearing up after famous people, rather than ordinary people".Kate said Mr Kenny also told them he had dated a famous actress and TV presenter after meeting her at a hotel bar he ran in Liverpool, despite there being no suggestion he had."We then found out he had been telling people he runs the NTA party," said Kate."We felt sorry for him."Kate said Mr Kenny always knew the "right name to drop" and persuaded the couple to invest with him in a new Liverpool Cocktail Week.But his money he promised wasn't forthcoming and the event never happened, leaving the couple £20,000 out of pocket.
In an attempt to explain the delay in paying up, Mr Kenny presented the couple with a £40,000 loan agreement from Metro Bank.A month later when that money didn't materialise, he shared a letter from the same bank saying his account had been erroneously suspended for potential fraudulent activity.The loan offer had inexplicably risen to £75,000 and it referenced another £35,000 from an investor in Malta.The couple confronted Mr Kenny in a phone call, but said he never paid them.
It wasn't the last time Mr Kenny claimed funds were coming from someone in Malta.When Mr Purslow asked for payment this year, Mr Kenny sent a screenshot, seen by the BBC, of an international money transfer for £200,000 from a bank in Malta, but the name was misspelled.When we asked the bank about the document, it said it was "not legitimate".We also contacted the people Mr Kenny said he had been speaking to about investing in the festival.Mr Vincent said he had never met him while two of the original Creamfields founders and current owners all said they had never heard of him.The Welsh government said it had never done an economic impact assessment.The Killers and Def Leppard said they had never been asked to perform. We have yet to hear back from The Libertines, Wet Leg and Pulp. Other bands said they had been asked, but deposits were never paid.
With six months to go until the festival, Monmouth Rising looked to be sinking.Genevieve said, with traders asking for their money back, she felt "morally obliged" to challenge Mr Kenny but he would not listen.Then, on 6 March, he posted an open letter on social media cancelling the festival because, he said, it was "no longer viable" but still hoped it would run in 2026.He said all ticket holders and vendors would receive refunds but BBC Wales has been told only 24 people had bought tickets and all were refunded because their payments had been held by the ticketing company.Many traders we spoke to said they were yet to get their deposits back.
Monmouth Rising would have cost millions to pull off from a standing start. The company due to provide the festival with hydrogen power said it entered into a commercial supply agreement but no work had been done. BBC Wales said it had never been approached to broadcast from the festival.We have also found - far from being software used to plan the Paris Olympics - the site plan was drawn up using an online app offering free trials.Suppliers and employees, including Mr Whitehouse, Mr Purslow and Ms Barker said they were thousands of pounds out of pocket and attempts to start legal proceedings against Mr Kenny stalled after he cancelled his phone number and moved addresses.The woman who had the 10-minute interview said she was left penniless and unable to claim Universal Credit for months because HMRC thought she had been paid.
We tracked down Mr Kenny on his new phone number in order to put these allegations to him.He said the line-up was real and he spent a year working on Monmouth Rising, adding it was "the only thing I focused on".He indicated he did pay some employees and said those who lost money could contact him directly, adding he has "never hidden away from anything".He wouldn't tell us where he's now living or answer our questions about the alleged forgeries, or the investors he claimed he had, and asked us to email him with our questions instead.He didn't respond to those questions in detail, but in a statement he said his "sole motivation" was to create something meaningful and that it came at personal cost to his health and finances.He said it fell apart when he realised he wouldn't be able to get permission for an event of that size at Monmouth Showground. Monmouthshire council told us, in the 12 months he claimed he spent planning the festival, he only had one meeting with them.He added that he was truly repentant, promising directly to those affected: "I will repay you."
Questions are now being asked about how this was able to progress as far as it did.James Kenny is a named director of dozens of small companies under different versions of his name, leaving £27,000 in unpaid County Court Judgements behind him.In 2008, he was convicted of two counts of fraud for forging his wife's signature to obtain a mortgage payment to clear £15,000 worth of debts.No-one can know what motivated Mr Kenny to build a festival based on lies, but very few of those we have spoken to believe Monmouth Rising would ever have worked. Genevieve, who is still owed £5,000 and has only just got another job, said she thinks Mr Kenny is "a fantasist and a narcissist"."I mean, this was meant to be a multi-million pound event and he set up his office at his mother's kitchen table," she said."He fooled all of us."
Additional reporting by Charlie O'Keeffe