The Game Fair opens for business in just two days from now in the grounds of Ragley Hall. There will be fewer stands at this year show as exhibitor numbers are reported to be down by about 10% to a figure in the region of 900, although Gunmaker’s Row will likely be as big if not bigger than ever. But whether there are 900 or 9000 stands it remains a super event. And it is one that the CLA so nearly gave up on.
Back in the early eighties the show was run, to put it mildly, by a team of superannuated army officers, who scored highly on the discipline (woe betide anyone whose car sat incorrectly within its designated parking area) but performed dismally when it came to matters commercial, with the result that the fair, which at that time was about half the size of what it is at present, was losing money; sufficient to the point that it negotiated with the owners of the Daily Mail over a possible sale.
Enter the professionals in the shape of David Hough and Fiona Eastman who, over the next few years transformed it into an exemplar of the show organiser’s art made perfect. Which only leaves one to wonder just what kind of event it would now be had the CLA flogged off its crown jewels and indeed what kind of body the CLA itself would have become without it.