A single sentence on the organisation's website announces the festival, which has been held for the last five years over the traditional Glasgow Fair holiday weekend in the middle of July, will not take place in 2008.

But committee member Lorraine Harverson, who has been involved in the organisation from the start, told us the ButeLive organisation was now concentrating on other areas - and the festival could yet be resurrected by some new faces.

Said Lorraine: "We are not putting ButeLive on this year, because we all have so many commitments.

"We have been active for five years, but we are only in semi-hibernation. If anyone who is young and active wants to run with it, please contact us, and we will be happy to lend our help and expertise.

"The committee is concentrating more on ButeFM and the promotion of new ideas rather than existing ones, and there are now new venues such as the Victoria, the Regent and the Isobar, promoting music and comedy.

"We see ourselves as an arts nursery - we want to go for new genres, such as dance, and in particular we want to involve the island's youth."

The festival's organisers attracted many big names from the world of music, theatre and comedy to perform in Rothesay, including Carol Laula, Michael Marra, Liz Lochhead, Carol King, Geoff Martyn (formerly of Travis), piper Finlay MacDonald, stand up comedians Vladimir McTavish and Des McLean and of course festival patrons Maureen and Johnny Beattie.

A former director and founder member of the ButeLive committee, Steve Thornton, told us: "I would rather see ButeLive continue, but it was going in one direction and I wanted to go in another, so I felt I was no longer much use to them.

"Unfortunately, in my opinion, there is a climate which affects Rothesay if you are involved in music, because we are too near Glasgow.

"When we put on The Proclaimers in the Pavilion, I discovered some people travelled from here to Skye to see them, and made a weekend break out of it, rather than see them locally and then just go to the same old pub afterwards.

"Apart from funding difficulties, the other problem with ButeLive is that it has music, stand up comedy and theatre, whereas the jazz and line dancing festivals concentrate on a specific art.

"I am really sorry it is not going ahead this year, because there have been some really good acts in the past from places such as Nashville, Montana and France."