Joe Pidgeon broke down in tears as he described how he would lose his home over the failed Beachdown Festival.

The Brighton music festival was called off shortly after midnight yesterday, just two days before thousands of people were due to turn up at Devil’s Dyke for the three day event.

He said he was “a dead man walking” after he and the three other directors of Future Festivals Ltd were forced to call off the festival.

He said his family’s home, where he lives with his partner and daughter, would have to be sold.

The 43-year-old said: “Everything changed two weeks ago when three big corporate suppliers, including a staging supplier and a sound system supplier, asked for 100% of their money up front.

“The bank simply wouldn’t lend us the money in this current economic climate.”

He said despite doing everything they could, at 5pm on Tuesday he and the other directors, Darren and John Murphy, decided the whole event was not financially viable.

He said: “We have all put an immense amount of emotional and financial investment into this.

We are just three men from Brighton who really wanted this to work.

“The most frustrating thing for me is if we’d been able to do it, we would have had a quarter of a million pounds straight away from sponsorship and things.

It was purely a cash flow issue.”

It is believed Darren Murphy’s father, John, contributed up to £250,000 to help get Beachdown off the ground last year and Mr Pidgeon has had to remortgage properties in the city to continue funding the event.

He said: “This has been the worst 24 hours of my life. We were so close.

I was there yesterday and everything was looking ready to go, but without these three crucial suppliers it was an impossibility.

“But they didn’t tell us in June or July, when we might have been able to sort something out.

“During the emergency meeting we asked ourselves could we sit down in front of local authorities and police and say we can do this.

The answer was no.

“I feel like I’m going to be pilloried for this but I gave it everything I had.”

Mr Pidgeon did not rule out organising another event.

He said he felt he wanted to “say sorry” to the fans.

He said: “We have so many people we want to apologise to we don’t know where to start.

It’s the ticket purchasers and local businesses we feel most responsible for.

“Perhaps in the future I can organise an event where they could get in for free but at the moment I am having to deal with the here and now.”

Weekend Beachdown tickets cost £90 and day tickets went from £30. Traders had to pay upwards of £1,000 for a pitch.

Mr Pidgeon and his fellow organiser Darren Murphy both remortgaged their houses in a bid to save the event.

Both have a background in the music industry.

Mr Pidgeon founded Touch Magazine using his previous company Contenda, which went into liquidation in June.

Mr Murphy, a Brighton DJ, set up Inner Rhythm, a dance music shop in North Laine.

His father John Murphy, a company director, is rumoured to have contributed savings to try make Beachdown work.

A source, who asked not to be named, said: “John Murphy sold the Caxton Arms in Brighton to provide upwards of £250,000 for Beachdown.”

The cancellation has completed a torrid year for Beachdown’s organisers Future Festivals Ltd, whose reputation was tarnished by complaints when it failed to fully pay suppliers for last year’s event.

In December, Beachdown organisers claimed all the businesses had been paid and the problem was caused by a delay in receiving a tax rebate from the Inland Revenue.

Beachdown directors were served another blow in May when one of their main ticket vendors, Trinity Street, announced it was insolvent.

The same month, Future Festivals Ltd made an eleventh-hour cancellation of plans for a marquee staging acts during the Brighton Fringe Festival.

Neil Greenway, of efestivals.co.uk, which promotes music events, contacted The Argus on Tuesday to say there had been rumours within the industry that bands had not received deposits and some might be pulling out.

Last year, the organisers claimed they had sold about 10,000 tickets. In fact, it was believed to be less than 6,000.