The World Showband Championships 1998

by Tracey Redhead

Being a small band, Hessle's aim when entering the World Showband Championships was to have a good time and try to entertain the public - always a priority for us! The thought of winning a medal was well and truly the last thing on our minds - particularly as we had started the year down on playing members and behind in learning our show.

However, July 24th 1998 loomed and we were on our way to London to stay at the Hilton National in Croydon. (We may be small, but we know how to enjoy ourselves in style - Ed) After a relaxing night, it was up bright and early for breakfast (if our nerves would let us stomach it!) and off to Millwall Football Club for the Opening Ceremony. The weather looked as though it was going to be a scorcher and we were glad we had our newly adapted uniforms - they would be much cooler.

After a clap through, a warm up and a brief look at some bands it was time to change into our uniforms - blue trousers with a metallic blue stripe, metallic blue top with a comet on the back over a t-shirt and blue bandanas topped with a silver star.

We certainly looked different and after several glances from other bands we thought that at least if nothing else we would be noticed.

Lynne Donkin, our guard instructor and ex-champion Drum Major had come out of retirement especially for the occasion and this gave us all that little bit more confidence as we moved onto the edge of the arena.

Disaster nearly struck when our newly painted spaceship refused to negotiate the bumps in the arenas surface. Fortunately, with brute force and some rejuvenated dilithium crystals, we made our entrance to 'War of the Worlds'.

Our shows theme was 'Earth, Above and Beyond' and the music consisted of: Star Wars, Red Dwarf, Turkish Rondo, Colours of the Wind and Independence Day.

We played our hearts out to an appreciative audience - not note or step perfect , but certainly a great improvement on anything we'd done all year. We also wanted to do our best for our show choreographer - Angie Ellis, as she was unable to be with us due to the death of her father. We came off the arena knowing that we had done the best that we could.

As soon as our instruments were away we dashed back to the arena to learn our score from the electronic scoreboard. When the scores came up we couldn't believe it - a total of 85.6 which meant we'd achieved a gold medal!

Totally amazed and exhilarated we received our award, one of three gold medals awarded that day, and in turn applauded all the other bands, who had also all given marvellous performances. What a pity there wasn't a very large crowd to witness some of the excellent shows that were performed on the Saturday.

Some of us stayed over to watch Sundays events and were dazzled by the size, styles and displays of some of the bands that we had never seen before. We were particularly impressed by St Francis Xaviour and Sarasit Phithaylai who did a superb musical show based on Phantom of the Opera. We were also extremely surprised when we learnt that Sarasit Phithaylai were a Junior Division 2 Band!! Also enjoyable were SG Fanfarenzug Potsdam's incredible drill, Pasveercorps wonderful manoeuvres and of course the blitz of the Empire Statesmen and their crazy field commander, the eventual winners.

After totting up the points we realised we had achieved an astounding 8th place overall, out of 45 bands. We were totally amazed, particularly seeing that some of the bands we were impressed by were placed lower than us. We guess the judges liked the more entertaining bands.

We really had a brilliant weekend, one that many of us will never forget.