A complete entertainment programme
GE Capital held the Sunday Funday in the grounds of its Leeds premises. They provided the event infrastructure — marquees, toilets, parking and catering — while Spectacular Events was responsible for the entertainment.
Ron designed the entire entertainment package, drew up the site plan and produced the entertainment programme. The exact attendance has been lost to time, but it was a substantial family event with several hundred guests and a programme designed to keep children and adults occupied throughout the day.
From inflatables to laser clay shooting
The package included bouncy castles, an inflatable slide, side stalls, laser clay shooting, radio-controlled cars, chair planes, swing boats, soft play, archery, clowns, balloon modelling, Punch & Judy and team games. Quite a lot of the equipment belonged to Spectacular Events; specialist attractions such as the laser clay shooting were brought in from other suppliers.
That was how the business worked at the time. We could provide a substantial core package ourselves and then bring in trusted specialist suppliers and performers to build a complete event around the client's site and requirements.
Twenty or thirty people to bring it all together
Ron remembers having somewhere in the region of 20 to 30 staff, performers and attraction operators working on the event. Before the gates opened, everybody had to know not only what they were doing but how the whole operation fitted together.
On a job of this size, entertainment management meant much more than booking attractions. There were vehicles and equipment to organise, staff to brief, performers to schedule, health and safety to consider, welfare arrangements to make and problems to solve as the day progressed.
Managing the event — and performing in it
Ron was the entertainment event manager, circulating around the site throughout the day and keeping an eye on the programme, performers and attractions. But he still performed too, appearing as Chuckle the Clown and presenting a couple of Punch & Judy shows. Hazel was part of the entertainment team as a face painter.
As with any large event, there were occasional issues to deal with. Ron remembers some local youths trying to climb over the perimeter fence to get in, but GE Capital's security team dealt with the problem and the entertainment operation carried on.
A £10,000 milestone
This event has a particular place in our business history. It was the first time Spectacular Events earned £10,000 from a single event — a milestone that reflected the scale of the entertainment package, the amount of equipment involved and the size of the team needed to deliver it.
What the guests thought
GE Capital collected comments from employees after the Sunday Funday, and the surviving feedback sheet is a wonderful record of how the event was received. Guests described it as “fantastic”, “something for everyone” and “the best organised family event I have been to”. Another simply wrote that the children “absolutely loved it”.
Why Spectacular Events eventually became simpler
Events like this show just how far Spectacular Events had developed. We were working around the country, organising staff, performers, vehicles and equipment week after week. Sometimes we had several jobs running at the same time, which meant delegating responsibility to other people while Ron coordinated everything.
It was successful, but it also became a lot of stress and worry. Eventually Ron and Hazel decided to step away from large-scale event production, sell much of the equipment and concentrate on the entertainment they could provide themselves. That more personal business became Jolly Good Productions as it is today.
We no longer organise corporate events on this scale. But the experience never disappeared. Every smaller booking still benefits from years spent planning programmes, managing performers, dealing with venues and making sure that the practical details behind the entertainment are right.