Note to self: don’t ever take a beach ball to a music festival. Especially if Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson is performing.
The Scottish musician has gone viral over an unfortunate incident that unfolded during her set at Melbourne’s Good Things Festival.
While appearing on stage, the 59-year-old singer paused to take a moment to call out a fan in the crowd who “disrespected” her by throwing a giant beach ball around in the crowd.
“Big man with your big f**king beach ball. Oh I’m so scared of you, so thrilled by you … what a f**king douche bag,” she can be heard saying in the clips shared on social media.
“You’re big f**king dudes. Wow. Oh, my God, they’re so cool. This is just so f**king outrageous, I can’t get over it. Wow. It’s disrespectful,” she continued her rant.
“We’re fed up with not getting f**king paid properly, and fed up with having to play for douche bags like you.”
And then, the Stupid Girl singer went even more personal with her insults.
“You’re a f***ing middle-aged man. In a f**king ridiculous hat. And you’re a f**king f**k face. I literally want to f**king ask people to punch you in the f**king face. But you know what? I’m a lady. So I won’t.
“Truly, I would love to send my crew over to mess you up. But you know what? I won’t because I pity you. Because you’re a small man with a small d**k.”
For those in the crowd, the public spat came as a complete surprise, with some claiming they weren’t sure why the singing was so ticked off by the festival item.
“I don’t know that the guy was doing anything completely out of order,” a fan told Daily Mail.
“I’ve certainly seen worse behaviour in mosh pits than a dude with a beach ball … She drove it into violence which was a real interesting angle.”
According to reports, the inflatables were thrown out to the crowd during Machine Head’s prior performance and the Garbage singer wasn’t a fan of them sticking around.
It is believed she asked for them to be sent up to her on stage, and once they were, she began her tirade – mainly aimed at the man in a wide-brimmed hat.
Whatever the reason, most fans weren’t having any of the lecture, and as she moved on from Melbourne to Brisbane for the next show, fans decided to respond in their own epic way – by arriving with ALL of the beach balls.
Scenes were shared across TikTok where a heap of various inflated items were seen bouncing around the crowd.
“Don’t piss off fans,” one person captioned the moment.
And plenty of the 200 comments that followed agreed.
“Love their music but she was out of line with that rant,” one person wrote.
“As someone that was at the Melbourne show I was hoping she would have an empty crowd, but this is even better,” another wrote.
“From a Melbourne attendee I wish to thank Brisbane fans,” another chimed in.
And another person wrote: “Love it when Australia gets petty.”
Manson addressed the Brisbane crowd over the beach balls making an encore appearance at the gig.
“I just have to address your glorious beach balls, they’re very impressive! And not only are they impressive but they are very, very big,” she said, before turning things political in a pseudo apology.
“The only thing that kind of shocks me a little is there’s been more fuss made about me offending beach balls than there has about 20,000 Palestinian kids who are now f**king under the dirt.
“Maybe a beach ball brings you joy and for that I apologise. If I upset you about your blessed beach balls, I humbly apologise,” she continued.
