CHAPTER ONE – Staring Disaster Squarely in the Face

Yes…ok, I admit it….I was late. However, the very pleasant lady on Manx Telecom’s reception was well rehearsed. I came rushing through the revolving door and just like a rolling Formula One pit stop I was first handed my fully completed identity badge. “I hope I have spelled ‘Jonathan’ right” as she ran alongside me “yes that’s terrific”…. “They are all in the Board Room and I have called the lift for you”…. “Thank you”, I blurted as I zoomed out of the pit lane.

Why does everything take twice as long when you are in a hurry? The lift door took twice as long to open as normal, then it took twice as long to close and twice as long to travel from floor to floor and then again twice as long to open on arrival! Things were much better in the old days…everything worked a lot quicker!! Eventually I escaped the lift and rushed into Manx Telecoms boardroom, with its magnificent views over the wonderful Manx countryside, and as I did so it was on the tip of my tongue to say “lateness due to the wrong type of leaves on the track at Ballasalla Junction causing the 7.43am Port Erin Flyer to be cancelled and thus delaying the Douglas bound Express”….however, as it was now 3.10pm I just said “sorry I’m late” and sat down.

So who was I saying sorry to? Well, there was Voirrey and Andy from Manx Telecom, Terry from Ashgrove Marketing, John from Marsom Radio and Cheryl and myself from Street Heritage(I was doing all the talking and Cheryl was doing all the writing). Why were we there? It was our monthly media partners meeting to agree and report on progress.

We all listened with great interest to Voirrey’s experiences at this year’s Glastonbury festival which she had just returned from. I was keen to learn how much Michael Eavis had used of my ideas from the Peel Bay Festival in 2007! However, somewhat disappointingly, Voirrey had not observed ANY!! So I have told her she has to be more eagle-eyed next year!

Voirrey said that there was a full turnout for Rolf Harris and Tom Jones……mmmm?….and Blur (now if I could get The Verve!)I thought the riffs of Crosby Stills and Nash were infectious and yet The Times gave them a thumbs down – what do I know? Now Bruce is someone who knows how to deliver an energetic and totally entertaining show and ‘interface’ with his audience at the same time…. If only?? However, the cost Michael Eavis £3K for going 9 minutes past his finish time…now I would pay £3K for even just 9 minutes of Bruce next year at the MTBF!

Anyway, after just over an hour, we had finally agreed on our marketing strategy: try and sell as many b****y tickets as we can! So, a very simple strategy really, nothing too complicated.

However, in the meantime, we must try and get as many as possible to register over the next three months as they will be the backbone of this festival and will be able to say “I was there at the birth and played my part”. Just by people registering simply helps to give us the encouragement we need to keep building this. Also, we need to keep creating awareness as people keep saying to me “I see you are doing it again, but when is it? where is it? So please help to keep spreading the word and have a chance of winning FREE VIP tickets.

Anyway…..where was I? Oh yes, so I headed up to the field to be greeted by a very enthusiastic young car park attendant who said: “I am sorry you can’t park here, this is for management”. Just as I started thinking where is my permit one of the supervisors came over and said directly to the young lad “It’s ok”, as he held his lower arm, “if HE wants to park on the main stage it’s still ok”. And I thought with the amount of the equipment The Who had brought with them parking on the main stage was not really a serious option….maybe tomorrow night?

So I walked into the backstage area and Jools, our (Wembley Stadium) Event Safety Manager, came over to me and said “the earlier concerns of the Fire officers were justified due to us being put behind due to transport delays and the stage relocation earlier in the week. However, we have worked the problems and either eradicated or minimized them. I have just carried out a risk assessment and I consider it now to be low. However we have one major and a potentially disastrous problem”…..’oh Gawd I thought’ however I had to ask, “what’s that?” he replied “we are now having to overcome their inexperience of such a major event. And they are now extremely nervous”! He went on to add “and due to that tonight’s show rests on a knife edge”.

And just as Jools finished his last words we were called by the Fire Officers to an emergency meeting in the Event Management office (a metal Portakabin). I was the first to walk in and the two Officers were stood at the top of the cabin looking suitably glum. One stood staring at the table in front of him and the other was staring at the ceiling as if looking for the Sword of Damocles. I tried to lighten the darkened mood with a few throwaways but to no avail.

They refused to start until ALL the senior management had all arrived and gathered around a series of tables. This process of assembly appeared to take forever. Once assembled the senior Officer started by giving us a resume of the days’ events from their perspective and each word sent me further and further into depression. Have you ever seen the film ‘Evelyn’? A wonderfully uplifting film which stretches every human emotion. But right at the end two of the three judges are split about overturning some crazy Irish law which put children into care if the mother abandoned the family even the father was still there. However, it boiled down to the senior Judge giving his verdict either to maintain the Status Quo (now there is another idea?) or to actually apply common sense. Anyway during his summing up his mouth looked like it was in his neck as his chin was on his chest – the usual position when someone is delivering bad news. So in his summing, each “however” brings a complete change in direction. Well, that is what it was exactly like in this metal portacabin.

However I started to realise with every “however” that Pete Townshend was resting in his Winnebago just outside, Roger Daltrey was sat in my conservatory and that there is a REAL chance any minute now that I’m going to kiss goodbye to the massive fee they had already been paid and worse still….I’m going to have to go out and explain to 5,000 Who fans why they won’t be seeing The Who tonight without wearing a flak jacket!!

Anyway as I fell out of the other side of the mental mangle the only words that registered anything with me (as I had switched off and spent the last 5 minutes working out in my head a detailed disaster appraisal) “I’ll let it go tonight but we will carry out a full inspection in the morning!”

The door of the metal portacabin flew open as we all fell out from the pressure cooker we had just been stood in. Unfortunately, the whole day’s events had taken their mental toll on a couple of key people and the last 10 minutes had only served to make them even worse. As the ‘leader’ it fell upon me to try and calm things down and re-focus. Jools instructed security to let in the fans.

However, our problems were still not over. Because of a problem caused by the hurried repositioning of the stage two days earlier due to the Tentmaster being concerned about the canvas flapping on the stage gantry in high winds and possibly causing the canvas to tear the stage had to be hastily repositioned which caused the seat positions to alter (lesson learnt) which meant the Fire Officers (adding to the excitement) insisting certain seats be removed to maintain aisle widths. That, unfortunately, meant we had to reseat certain people before we could get started but fortunately people accepted the slight inconvenience in reasonably good humor.

My wife, Diane, turned up with the girls and said: “how’s it going?” I just looked at her and said: “you do not want to know, you DO NOT want to know!”

And I thought it was exciting enough in 2006 when the then DoLGE Chief Exec was refusing to give me a certificate to use the grandstand seating we had erected on Peel beach for the two tribute nights using one of the stages from Glastonbury. The grandstands were all designed by a firm of specialist UK structural engineers but because we had made it TOO safe, by putting in more supports than shown on the plan, as the scaffolding company just used them up rather than take them back to the yard, the DoLGE Building Inspector said it didn’t comply with the plan. Anyway, 10 minutes before the gates were due to open we managed to convince him that too many were better than too little. Anyway, of course, both nights went ahead without any incident.

So we finally opened the Peel Bay Festival with Back Door Slam who were excellent and then followed by The Who, who were every bit as entertaining as they were in their ‘youth’. I must admit, I never thought when I was a youth growing up in Peel I ever thought I would see one of my favorite bands of all time playing in ‘my backyard’. And even now people still say to me “I had the choice of seeing free entertainment on Douglas Prom (shows how long ago this was) or seeing The Who play in the IOM and I chose the free entertainment. And now I realize I made the wrong decision!” So the moral of that story is don’t be one of those and miss out next June!!

So did we have any problems that first night? Only one incident and that was a poor lady on the disabled platform who suffered mild hypothermia with the cold wind whistling through the tent on that damp June evening as ironically the Fire Officers insisted that we kept up the 6 meter high tent flaps in the event of an emergency!!

So we survived, only just, the first night. So tune in next time for “Good God…. it’s like the Gestapo have arrived”.

Introduction

Mmmm!!….not sure what happened yesterday. The news release about the MTBF being held in Nobles Park next year was embargoed until 7 am this morning, as you can see by clicking ‘read full story’ on the front page. But by 9.30am Voirrey at Manx Telecom (our terrifically supportive Prime Sponsors) is emailing Merita at Ashgrove (our excellent PR & Marketing ambassadors), copying me in saying Manx Radio (our totally enthusiastic media partners) have it loaded up as the head story on their website!

So big panic for 10 mins as MT say they’ll run the story NOW and I’m saying they can’t because Chris (who does an excellent job on our website) is away for the day and won’t be able to load it onto our website until the agreed time of 7 am‘ tomorrow’. So Manx Radio took the story down and then I’m driving through Douglas yesterday afternoon (trying to avoid – no choice – the collapsed building in Circular Road) and I’m catching up with the Manx Skeet listening to MR at 3 pm when I heard our two production managers, Ian and Richard, being interviewed (recorded last week at Nobles Park) saying their bit why they believe (which is absolutely true) that Nobles is the best home for the MTBF.

So …total confusion!! but a topic for conversation at our next partners meeting on 2nd July as we all strive for total co-ordination but just one of those little teething problems.

Anyway, as I was saying….the day before The Who are due to arrive on the Island I received a phone call from Rex King, who is their Tour Manager, saying “when you send the guys to the airport to collect Roger and Pete the last thing they want are tourist guides as they will want to focus in on the gig”.

Okay fair enough I thought. But I decided to take some time out to go down to the airport for 6 pm and leave those I was paying a lot of money to, who were a lot more experienced and qualified than me, to finalise the technical stuff (plus I was just the promoter of the PBF, it was the Event Safety Manager who had ‘life or death’ from our side. It was the same job he does at Wembley Stadium, V Festival and Radio 1 Roadshows etc), and so I went to the airport with Andy Kershaw to meet them.

Starting to get a bit hairy now – they were due on stage in just 2.5 hours and the weather was starting to close in and the practices had just been canceled due to fog up on the mountain closing in!! I’m sat in my car next to the runway they were due to come in on thinking, “this is starting to get a bit hairy now!” Just to add to the ‘hairiness’ Jamie, my son phoned me and said: “Dad, we have 5,000 people being held in the bar area and the Fire Officers are refusing to give us the Fire Certificate!” So after inquiring “why?” and agreeing what we needed to do and with who (pardon the pun) I revert back to concentrating on the hairiness at the airport because by now the two jets are running late which is starting to get REALLY hairy!!

Anyway eventually from a kneeling position, with fists clenched I was staring up at the Heavens and I noticed a jet emerging from lowering clouds. It lands and out strolls Pete Townshend and Andy introduces me and yes he was focused in on the gig. The next jet arrives and out strolls Roger Daltrey with the other band members. Andy introduces me to Roger and he jumps in my car and the first thing I say is “if you don’t want to talk that is fine if you do that’s fine”. He replies by saying “what are you talking about?”. So I explained about Rex and he said “no, I’m happy to talk” which we did all the way over to my house in Peel followed in the vehicle behind by his security.

I brought him into the house and introduced him to my wife, Diane, and daughters Lucy and Peggy and he was extremely pleasant and chatty. The idea of coming to the house was he wanted some relaxation before going on stage so Diane made him a cuppa whilst I tried to tune in Radio 4 on the radio in the conservatory (which is his preference in listening but a station I have never tuned into ever before so I hadn’t a clue where it was!) Anyway our phone rang and Diane came in and said “Jamie is on the phone”. So I had to abandon my attempt to find Radio 4 and went to speak to Jamie.

I picked up the phone and said “Hello” and Jamie replied “Dad, you had better get up here now. We have a really serious problem. The Fire Officers are refusing to give us the Fire Certificate and I have 5,000 people staring at me right now from the mojo barriers and Back Door Slam are due on in 40 minutes!”

Mmmm!!… I thought “do I want to go and talk to two local Fire Officers or sit here and talk to an internationally famous childhood hero of my mine who I’ll probably never, ever meet again?”

The Fire Officers won!! Tune in (not to Radio 4) for the next installment where I actually stared into the frightening face of complete disaster in a metal portacabin…….

Prologue

Hi, I’m Jonathan Irving. I’m the promoter of the Isle of Man Bay Festival and had the same ‘honour’ for the Peel Bay Festival. For my sins, it was my idea (and money) to try to see if a major music festival would work on the Isle of Man.

Well….it did and it didn’t really! It did from the point of view that everyone who came in 2007 (25,000) had a fantastic time but it didn’t from my point of view as I lost a huge amount of money. On top of the huge amount of money, I made a huge amount of mistakes (fortunately the vast majority of the concert goers didn’t experience too many of those) but I’m giving it another go in 2010 because Madness runs in the family!

I decided that just because I lost a mini-fortune last time that it didn’t necessarily follow that I would again as a lot of hard and expensive lessons were learned and the loss is only a true loss if I didn’t do it ever again. So here I am giving it another go!

So over the coming months leading up to the next festival in June next year, I’m going to write a blog so anyone interested can share with me the pain, the pleasure, and excitement of organizing another massive music festival for the Isle of Man. I’ll also share with you interesting/funny stories that happened during the 2007 Peel Bay – although you can be the judge of how interesting/funny they actually are!

The Introduction to follow soon….and the day that Roger Daltrey came to the house for a cuppa…

Manx Telecom Bay Festival Seats Sell-out – Few Extra Seats On Sale Tomorrow

Extra seats have been added for the Manx Telecom Bay Festival ‘X Factor Meets Britain’s Got Talent’ after the seating originally planned sold out in just 28 minutes this morning (Monday 2 November).

Tickets went on sale at 8 am today exclusively for people who had pre-registered. By 8:28 am, tickets for seats were sold out. Organisers have added an extra 300 seats inside the arena, which will go on sale tomorrow morning at 8 am, but they warn that once they’ve gone no more seats will be added.

The event, on the afternoon of Sunday 20 June 2010, will feature past finalists and winners for the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent including Diversity, George Sampson, Eoghan Quigg, Leon Jackson, Ruth Lorenzo, Signature and Stavros Flatley.

Jonathan Irving, promoter of the Manx Telecom Bay Festival, said:

“We knew that the X Factor Meets Britain’s Got Talent would be popular, but we were amazed that the seats sold out so quickly and so had to take a quick decision to add more seats in order to try and meet at least some of the excess demand.

“Around 10,000 people pre-registered for tickets, which they were able to buy online and over the phone from this morning. So far we have sold enough tickets to have filled the Villa Marina twice over – and that is just on the first day and before the lines were open to the general public. Tomorrow, the lines and online booking service open to everyone, so the last few seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, and not only to those who pre-registered.”

Standing tickets have also sold very well for both X Factor Meets Britain’s Got Talent, and the ‘Here and Now – Last Night in the Park – Stonking 80s Party’, which will take place on the evening of Sunday 20 June.
The 80s party will be standing only as seven original 80s artists and bands take to the stage, including Rick Astley, Boy George, Belinda Carlisle and Kim Wilde.

Mr. Irving said:

“There are around 7,000 standing tickets for each event, and so far we have sold about a third for the Stonking 80s Party, so I would urge everyone to book them now.

“Over the next couple of weeks we will publicise the Friday ‘pop’ night and Saturday ‘indie/rock’ night line-ups, and we think they will be just as popular as both the 80s and X Factor Meets Britain’s Got Talent events.”