David Parkin on a Midsummer's night dream
ANOTHER Saturday Night…as Sam Cooke sang.
But unlike Our Sam, who went on to sing that “I ain’t got nobody”, I had plenty of people to deal with.
I mentioned last week how I had compered the AABIE Charity Ball for financial group AAB.
It was such a great Saturday night event that I wondered whether hosting another ball a week later might prove an anticlimax.
Not a bit of it as the sun shined on a super Midsummer evening for the Greens2Blue Ball in Harrogate on Saturday.
Around 350 guests mingled in the paddock area of the Pavilions event venue at the Great Yorkshire Showground surrounding the boat that David Knaggs and Richard Larking will row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in later this year.
I’ve written before about the epic challenge that this pair of golfing lawyers are soon to set out on.
When they came up with the idea of taking part in what is known as “The World’s Toughest Row” from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the West Indies, many dismissed it as a mid life crisis that they would quickly forget about.
Not a bit of it.
David and Richard invested their own money into buying a boat and getting the best physical, mental and technical coaching and support they could.
And rather than making it a challenge to purely achieve personal goals, they have made it their mission to raise as much money as possible for two great charities: Maggie’s Yorkshire and Friends of Alfie Martin.
Their golf day at the end of May at Alwoodley Golf Club in Leeds raised over £30,000.
I’d like to tell you more about it but I was ‘NFI’ as the young people - and plenty of older ones - say these days.
I’m hoping it was because of the standard of my golf rather than what they really think of me.
The Greens2Blue Ball - the name is a nod to the fact the pair met on the first tee of Alwoodley and regularly play there together and are setting off across the wide blue Atlantic Ocean - was another step along the road towards their target of raising £150,000 to be split between two charities.
Maggie’s is beautiful place providing an oasis of calm in the grounds of St James’ Hospital in Leeds which provides free support to people with cancer and their families.
The Friends of Alfie Martin was set up by Fiona and Roger Martin when they lost their baby son when no specialist transportation was available to take him to hospital for critical care.
Fiona wanted to honour her son by improving the transport of critically ill children throughout Yorkshire and 23 years later the charity, which is run by unpaid volunteers, has raised £1m to provide life-saving equipment for Yorkshire’s sickest babies.
It was no surprise that Fiona was recently awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours and guests at the ball on Saturday gave her a standing ovation when I introduced her.
The audience gave both Fiona and Sadie Munro from Maggie’s their full attention when speaking, but were a “lively” bunch throughout the evening.
Given the long room at the Pavilions meant that, standing at the lectern on the stage, I looked out onto an empty dance floor with half of the guests to the left of me and half to the right.
When I say “lively”, that is not a criticism.
As a compere you want the audience to be up for some fun and vociferous.
This lot definitely were.
I’ve MC’d some events before and I went down like a slut drop in a WI meeting.
Though I should point out to any potential event organisers, those occasions were few and far between.
Not the slut drops, the poor reception.
I thought the food and service at the Pavilions were excellent and Jackie Knaggs and Caroline Pullich and their Greens2Blue Ball committee - pictured above - had done a great job organising and delivering a brilliant event.
The audience were fun and responsive and full of friends and family of David and Richard and sponsors and fellow members of Alwoodley Golf Club.
I knew plenty of people in the audience so it gave me plenty of licence to pick out a few for a bit of gentle ribbing.
The headline sponsor of the Greens2Blue challenge is corporate recovery and financial group Begbies Traynor.
Not only has Julian Pitts, regional managing partner of Begbies Traynor, sponsored the row but he also donated an overnight stay for eight people in a four-bed lodge at the magnificent Archerfield golf resort in Scotland including eight rounds of golf.
After highlighting this to the audience, I said: “Julian, as many of you know, is the pre-eminent insolvency practitioner in Yorkshire. He would be delighted for any successful bidder to buy this lot...but it would help if you are considering a pre-pack administration deal…”
What do you mean, you don’t find that funny?
Believe me, if you are in corporate recovery or business, it’s a cracker.
Given Julian supports this blog as “founding member” I’ll lavish all the praise I can on him.
For those looking for a little bit of ‘Parky Love’ and profile, I would suggest subscribing to this blog.
Before the live auction by Richard Smailes, I did a ‘heads & tails’ game which, rather than tossing a coin, I asked questions about Richard and David as well as the sponsors and some Harrogate and Yorkshire general knowledge.
Did you know for instance, which famous writer had this to say about Harrogate: “It is the queerest place with the strangest people in it leading the oddest lives…”?
Was it Charles Dickens or Agatha Christie?
It was actually Charles Dickens.
And, 170 years later, if you go into The Ivy in Harrogate on a Saturday night, you’ll see exactly what he meant.
One of the questions I asked was about when I first met David Knaggs.
He was the managing partner of law firm Irwin Mitchell in Leeds and he and I were asked to be judges of a student debating competition organised by James Michelsberg of Michelsberg Tailoring.
The winning team from the University of Leeds feature the son of a well known politician, but was it Theresa May or Iain Duncan Smith?
It was actually IDS.
Other questions were about the number of calories the rowers will burn off each day (around 10,000) and how deep the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean will be that they will row across (more than five miles).
Given normally the winner of most heads and tails games gets a box of chocolates or a bottle of champagne, the prize on the night was really impressive - a £1,200 diamond pendant - as well as luxury hampers for the runners up.
It certainly made for a competitive game - and kept the lively tables quiet for a bit too.
I did a short Q&A with Mike Bates, a former Royal Marine who served in the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq.
He joined the British secret service and was a counter terrorism covert operations leader.
He’s also a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu.
I think I was perfectly justified in introducing him as “Doncaster’s answer to James Bond”.
Mike is the fastest Briton to row the Atlantic solo and he offered inspiration and advice to Richard and David.
I think the hardest question I asked him was that he had no one to speak to on his row, what advice would he give Richard and David on how to cope given that Richard will talk about Sheffield Wednesday and David will focus conversation on his favourite subject - himself.
I think Mike, whose own charity ball I compered before his row in 2022, said that resilience will be key!
It was then over to Richard Smailes to auction nine incredible lots, including a round of golf with football legend Sir Gareth Southgate and David O’Leary, a stay in a villa in the Algarve and a Michelsberg suit.
I made the running in the early bidding for the suit, but given James, resplendent in a midnight blue wool mohair double breasted dinner suit, had plenty of customers and admirers in the room, it was no surprise to see the suit sold for a bid of £1,600.
I’d like to think that me modelling a purple velvet Michelsberg dinner jacket did help the cause, but who knows?
One lady did start stroking my jacket later on in the evening and commenting on how “plush” it was.
I don’t think it was the drink that prompted her tactile approach, I think I reminded her of a young Tom Ford.
The auction raised around £25,000, boosted by the fact that the person who had won the heads and tails game chose to generously put the diamond pendant back into the auction.
The Greens2Blue Ball made over £50,000 on the evening, from table sales, donations, the live auction, heads and tails and a silent auction.
It is an impressive amount in itself, but that figure was doubled thanks to the incredible generosity of one of the guests, touched by what they had heard and seen on the evening, who decided to make an anonymous donation of £50,000.
Given this person is already a massive supporter of many charities in Yorkshire, it was a stunning act of generosity which achieved something I have never seen before, it left David and Jackie Knaggs and Caroline Pullich speechless.
It didn’t last for long, but at least I can say I was there to witness it.
Have a great weekend.