These big Livery events do come together seamlessly, don’t they?

It’s nice to think that Liverymen, their guests and every other attendee at our big events do seem to think the above line is correct, writes Liveryman Christopher Tate. It must mean that no-one really saw the seams! So, we thought it might be interesting for readers of Coachlines to learn what does go into the preparation for our annual big night out – to at least make it appear to be seamless.

With the 2024 Livery Banquet set for 17th May, less than a month from when you will be reading this, with its theme of naval aviation, in association with the charity Navy Wings. Once again, Liverymen and their guests will enjoy a wonderful evening of fine food, wines, and some very special entertainment in the Guildhall, one of the City’s most historic venues.

This year’s additional attractions include the almost certainly unique sight of a First World War aircraft inside the Banqueting Hall. This star exhibit is a full-sized flying replica of a 1914 Bristol Scout. Under its gaze on 17th May, guests will enjoy stories and anecdotes from naval aviators and engineers, to recognise this year’s centenary of the formation of the Fleet Air Arm.

Look what’s landing on the stage in the Guildhall

As to what else you may miss if you are not able to attend the Guildhall Banquet, well, you may just have to wait to read enviously all about that in our future editions. Alternatively, there are still a few seats left, and you can be sure that the team behind this year’s Banquet event will have you thoroughly well fed, wined – and entertained.

And it was the Banquet 2024 planning that prompted our Editor to ask me, as one of the 2023 event team, to reveal what lay behind last year’s great show. In early June 2023 we celebrated Britain’s great achievements over 100 years of the famous endurance motor race held on the Circuit de la Sarthe, the ‘Vingt Quatre Heures du Mans’ – plain ‘Le Mans’ to every enthusiast. How did that one all come together?

The ‘conductors of the orchestra’ on these occasions are always your Clerk and Assistant Clerk. If anyone’s Banquet efforts appeared ‘seamless’ to the hundreds of attendees, then that is due to the conductors’ baton wielded so freely and cheerfully by Leaning & Firth, Event Planners!

The first and delicate trick for 2023’s event was to fit it around the crowded schedule of the stars and cars who we needed to be with us, to sprinkle some stardust on our London celebration. My problem was that slots for Livery companies to host dinners at the Guildhall are few and far between – and the 24-Hour race at Le Mans is always in mid-June. To be topical – and to have the driver stars available in the UK – we needed to grab a date close to the race; but not so close that all the stars would already be busy in France. We needed a date which fitted around those two constraints. But eventually we got that resolved and planning moved up a gear.

Task one was to get the real Le Mans organisers, the famed Automobile Club de l’Ouest, to agree that ours was the recognised official event in the UK to celebrate its centenary. Luckily, long years of my TV work and connections built up at the circuit with the ACO meant that your scribe was able to get that endorsement from Pierre Fillon, the President of the ACO. With that, our ‘pitch’ to the manufacturers who have had such success at the great race was a great deal easier: Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin and many kind private owners of famous race cars of the past joined our plans.
That way, we could set the scene.

Inside the Guildhall, on stage, where the aircraft will be this year, we had the 2003 Bentley – the car also shown in this period photo, leading the race:

Next up: attract the star drivers: We wanted the past British winners of Le Mans, and above all, Derek Bell MBE, the ever-active five-time Le Mans winner to agree to be our star guest and be interviewed between the banquet’s dinner courses – luckily, Derek is an old friend. Along with Derek, it took a lot of work, and quite some exercising of the 40-plus years of building my address book, but in the end I was fortunate to complete a pretty full set – we were able to also entertain Messrs Brundle, Brabham, Attwood, Oliver, Wallace, and Warwick – past Le Mans winners all.

It was, I was told, eye-opening for many guests to hear directly from each driver as we made progress around the Great Hall for a chat with each winner. They were all good sports, and we even made Martin Brundle well up a little, as he spoke of his nerves when sending his son off into the Le Mans night. After all the effort of diary co-ordination with busy men, it was great that these drivers lent some real stardust to the tables they sat on, to the delight of so many Liverymen and their guests.

Step three was to pull together a memorable keepsake, the event’s glossy programme, and to link that to classic Le Mans archive TV footage relevant to our visiting star drivers, some of which I had in fact commentated on live during the races back in the day as the official TV commentator. We had the edited results showing on the big screen.

Lesley Upham, in 2023 Chair of our Communications Committee, was a huge help – a patient editor, and a tower of strength in getting all that text and photographs together. I managed to get those many hours of classic TV footage edited down to the 15 minutes allowed on the Clerk’s fearsome minute-by-minute schedule!

Fourth task was the most fun: The external display – thanks to the trust and generosity of many friends in the motorsport business, we pulled it off. Setting out the cars in the forecourt of the Guildhall from lunchtime on the day certainly provided an unexpected delight to many City workers and random passers-by – including to my pleasure, my son. The guests’ arrival on a thankfully warm and dry early June evening was much enhanced by the sight of the stunning Silk Cut Jaguar, the Porsche 962, and the Aston Martin of 2008 – and capped off by the 1957 Jaguar D Type Le Mans racer on loan from the factory. Probably £40 million in value on one photograph.

In summary, to create and run such events do inevitably take up a mass of time for many people. In 2023, it was apparent from the many generous comments afterwards, that those who were there on the night had felt it all worthwhile – and had enjoyed it. Importantly, so did the star guests, seeing the Guildhall and our Livery in its pomp and at its finest – memorable for everyone there, and for so many differing reasons.

Do these things either come together, or even run on the night itself ‘seamlessly’? No, of course not! But as long as it all works out and looks and feels like it was effortless, then it will be/has been a job well done.

That’s why I would encourage all of you who are not yet committed, to get your banquet tickets now and go and see how the naval aviators, the Clerk and all the 2024 Banquet team deliver another excellent evening.