Say it loud: silent discos are a crime against culture

In Church Going, Philip Larkin stops in a provincial church, pooters about “in awkward reverence”, decides the place was probably not worth stopping for, then wonders as to what will become of our religious buildings, once we’ve shed the last vestiges of Christianity. This was in 1954.

His conclusion was that churches might become sites of an altogether different superstition – or perhaps just places where we graze sheep and goats. It’s fair to say Larkin never had any inkling about the rise of silent discos.

Last month, beyond the spot near the stairs to the crypt where in 1170 Thomas Becket achieved martyrdom, revellers – for there is no other word — donned wireless headsets, tuned them to a preferred frequency, and jiggled to the timeless staples of the school disco setlist. Each night for four nights, 750 ticket holders stood in an otherwise silent Canterbury Cathedral, belting out to themselves the non-verbal hook from Blur’s Girls & Boys: “Oh! Oh oh. Oh-oh-oh!”

Around them, the Cathedral itself was lit up in LED hues of purple, blue and pink, like a glowstick bitten open. Outside, a few protesters milled, complaining that this holiest of holies was being defiled by an event called “Silent Discos In Incredible Places”.

Happily, church staff were on hand to offer PR rebuttal. The event would, they pointed out, offer much-needed funds for ever-necessary church restoration projects. The fact that the Church of England was at that moment recruiting more staff into its new Racial Justice Unit, whose wages would, over the course of a year, more than wipe out the funds raised, was a point left dangling.

Perhaps more alarming than allegations of defilement, sacrilege, the possibility of an Anglican mujahideen waging war against the General Synod, was the sense that the silent disco is in rude health.

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