The fairground is called various things in different parts of the country, in Yorkshire its "The Feast", in Newcastle "The Hoppings", and most other parts of the North East its called "The Shows", no doubt there are others.

At one time, before the advent of steam power and then electricity, the funfair consisted entirely of side shows and games. As rides began to come to the fore, an attempt was made by the Showmen's Guild to preserve the heritage of the sideshow, by inserting in its rule book an order that a certain percentage of all fairgrounds must be reserved for shows. During my lifetime I have seen giants, midgets, boxing, exotic dancers, mice, fleas and other various types of show. Nowadays they are virtually all gone, public attitudes have meant that things like exceptionally tall or short people are no longer to be viewed as entertainment, or perhaps its the fact that in the modern world they no longer hold any wonder for people who have seen pictures of man walking on the moon, bottoms of oceans and other wonders. Whatever the reason I think that they are an extinct part of the modern fairground and one which I can't ever see making a comeback.

A couple of images below show Shufflebottoms Wild West Show, an extremely popular form of entertainment on the fairgrounds of yesteryear. The second image is extremely interesting, showing Florence standing against a wall whilst the knife thrower outlines her body with his knives. If you look you will see she has her young son Garry standing between her legs, a modern Health and Safety inspector would have apoplexy at the sight, and if you know my "uncle Garry" this early exposure to danger probably explains a lot! Only Kidding.





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We currently have a couple of special offers available until the end of February. On our helter skelter site helterskelterhire you can hire a square helter skelter along with Victorian swing boats for £800, this is only available in the North East and Yorkshire areas, we can supply the offer to other areas but a fuel surcharge would be applicable. The event must be booked before the end of february but, can take place on any date.

The second offer is from our sister site candyflosscrazy, any bride booking a wedding package with the Victorian Candy Floss cart can have the candy floss supplied in tubs, custom printed with the bride and grooms details at no extra cost. Again, the package must be booked before the end of February, but the wedding can take place on any date.


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At the moment I am in negotiations with a number of university and college events to supply rides. A couple of these are in Cambridge, so Friday I made the trip down to the city to look over the sites. I have never been to Cambridge before, but I will most certainly visit again, the City is absolutely stunning. The architecture of some of the buildings, both in the city centre and at the colleges is well worth a visit, and the sense of Grandeur and history is absolutely amazing.



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Looking back over 2006 it was a real roller coaster ride (excuse the pun). As the traditional funfair business declined sharply, our corporate activities really took off. We visited some absolutely stunning places, and some real rough areas. One small community event we were attending was scheduled to finish at four pm. A few days before the event we received a phone call from the organisers, "Do you mind finishing at three", they asked
"No problem", I replied, "But is there a reason?"
"Yes, the police mobile CCTV camera van has to leave at three, and they advise you not to be there after they are gone", lovely!

We also met some varied characters, again some were absolutely lovely people, on the other hand at least two of those we dealt with are actively being sought by various police forces who would like them to help with their enquiries.

One thing we have found is that experience counts for a lot, the experienced events organisers know not only what is possible, but also what is viable, unfortunately some of those organising community events have little grasp of economics, people will organise a table top sale aimed at an audience of 200 people, and ask if we can attend with a roller coaster, four or five major rides and a dozen stalls? When you explain that for the expected crowd you may be able to bring a single children's ride, they are somewhat crestfallen.

We survived the year quite well, the only problem we encountered that we couldn't solve was the day we were booked to attend a James Bond themed day at a car dealership, on the way to Scunthorpe the vehicle, (an 8 wheeled Foden carrying a custom built shooting gallery) developed a problem with the cooling system and couldn't make it, normally we have a spare unit carrying a slightly smaller shooting gallery which could take its place, unfortunately that was booked into a private party at Worksop at roughly the same time so there was nothing we could do, the annoying thing is that our Foden vehicles have consistently been absolutely superb, the only other breakdown being a broken fan belt, and the vehicle limped home on that day under its own steam.



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It seems that specialisation is the way to go. Our dodgemhire.net site has only been active a few days and already the dodgem enquiries are into double figures. It is also ranking at no 6 on google under searches for dodgem hire, which is quite good considering it only took a couple of days to get it there, and I managed to do it without mentioning Britney Spears naked, knickerless or any other pornographic combination.

Our new site carouselhire.net is now active, again its a work in progress, but hopefully it will be as successful as the previous site.




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Continuing my series of how to win guides, I'll wrap the shooting gallery section up with a brief mention of cork guns. These fire a small cork plug usually trying to knock a target down. Cork guns are cheap and cheerful, designed purely for fun, not as accurate target shooting devices, to this end there isn't really much you can do but point the gun in the vague direction of the target and pray. The corks are lightweight and tend to rise, so aiming low should give you a marginally better chance.



Rather than try and explain the workings of this machine, I have found a very good you tube video from braniacs, so click on the play button below and watch this. The second video is a clip giving tips on various games.





The armchair experts will tell you that the balls are too big to fit into the hoops, this is another urban myth. The hoops are smaller than a standard basketball hoop, but there is usually a large prize at stake, and at the distances involved the operator would be bankrupt in a couple of hours if he used regulation hoops. One method that is used is to pump the basketball up as hard as possible, this helps to bounce the ball of the back plate and miss the hoop. Feel the balls and try and pick a couple that are softer than the others, also the best method is to throw the balls high so that they drop into the basket, rather than trying to bounce them off the backplate and in.


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When I put our first website together, it rapidly grew to encompass all of our operations. Eventually an offshoot site candyflosscrazy was designed to cater for weddings and private parties. This has worked exceptionally well since its inception, thus we have now just launched the first in a series of specialist sites, dedicated to providing individual items of funfair attractions.

Dodgemhire.net is still pretty basic at the moment, but over the coming weeks it will evolve into a fully featured standalone site specialising in nothing but the hire of dodgems, for college, corporate and private events.




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