My earliest recollection of fireworks was back in the late 1950s. I remember going to school one day and seeing a couple of boys showing off a 10 shilling note (50p in today’s money). They excitedly described how they’d written to Standard Fireworks to complain about a couple of dud rockets. Their 10 shilling refund set me thinking. If it’s that easy to make money maybe I should try it too! A few days later a crisp 10 shilling note arrived in the post. We’ve all done things perhaps we shouldn’t have done but I plead the innocence of youth. And the experience taught me a valuable business lesson: the customer is always right, even when he isn’t!
Back then fireworks were very much a once a year occasion and there was always a great sense of excitement for boys of my age when they appeared in the shops. Our Bonfire Night parties were family occasions with popcorn, toffee apples and, I later discovered, more than a little fuelled by my mother’s catholic sentiments.
Chemistry lessons spurred my interest and, armed with the family Encyclopaedia Britannica, I found the formula for gunpowder. My first ‘fireworks’ fizzed and sparkled with the addition of iron filings. I even managed to create a red effect with the aid of some Strontium Nitrate bought from Boots the Chemists (back in the days when they sold such chemicals over the counter).
It was around then that the Space Race hit the headlines – the Russians struck first with a series of dogs in orbit. I decided that I should join in. Having given up on trying to build my own rocket I went for the easy option of buying the largest Standard rocket available. My ambition was to launch a mouse. By and large it was a triumph. The parachute I had carefully constructed didn’t open as planned, but the mouse, nestled in a plastic capsule in the nose of the rocket – having first removed the stars – bounced happily back to earth none the worse for its 200ft ascent.
My interest in fireworks continued through Keele University with ground-breaking displays (courtesy of Wells Fireworks) at summer balls and at my wedding in 1971.
And there it would have probably ended had it not been for a chance occurrence in 1982.
Still on the Daily Mail and doing a bit of freelance reporting, my eye was taken by some exotic looking fireworks in a shop window. They were made in China. I contacted the importer, Roy Jackson of Sohni-Esco, and on November 5, 1982 my article appeared in the Mail headlined ‘New star lights up the sky’.
Roy Jackson was so chuffed with the publicity that he sent me a huge consignment of the most amazing-looking fireworks I had ever seen. My inaugural New Year’s Eve fireworks party that year was the talk of the town.
The seed had been sown and I thought fireworks had a future. My importer (the late Roy Jackson of Sohni-Esco) agreed to fulfil my orders and I started advertising in magazines like Private Eye. The results were encouraging and my fledgling business was soon flying.
1985 – We’re officially a company
Business had developed from a few orders to a few dozen and I was arriving later and later at work as deliveries took me all over London. I registered the name Fantastic Fireworks Ltd. I knew absolutely nothing about the industry nor anyone in it. It was a pure gut instinct that I could put my writing skills to work in marketing fireworks as an all-year-round entertainment.
1986 – A Royal wedding display
As well as supplying fireworks, people started asking if I would let them off as well. I hadn’t bargained on this but ever eager to please I was soon packing my car boot with fireworks and turning up at weddings and parties, to the delight of the guests. My first ‘big’ booking was with Torbay Tourist Board to celebrate the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson. We built a huge lancework set-piece of the happy couple on a scaffold tower and designed a display that consisted almost entirely of rockets. My photo tells you all you need to know about how new we were to the world of professional firework displays!
1987 – A momentous year
With business literally booming I decided to leave the Mail and nail my colours firmly to the mast of Fantastic Fireworks. My first attempt at importing fireworks almost ended in disaster. I discovered that the fuses in the 5000 shells I was so excited to receive from San Tai in Taiwan all contained an illegal sulphur chlorate mix. There was only one thing for it. I hired in half a dozen students and we spent a week re-fusing the entire batch just in time for Bonfire Night.
1988 – War of the Worlds – a first in fireworks
Jeff Wayne’s best-selling album had been out for nearly a decade and I’d often thought it would make a great fireworks display. Jeff lived nearby and was very helpful when I asked permission to choreograph a display to his soundtrack. We premiered it at Thruxton Motor Racing circuit, using 20ft high lancework set-pieces to portray the Martian Fighting Machines. It was a huge success and remains one of the most popular shows in our portfolio.
Always on the lookout for new ideas, I spotted the novelty of daytime fireworks. They consisted mainly of 19-shot batteries, which fired up a barrage of cardboard tubes that opened into red, white and blue parachutes. A great opportunity for a patriotic occasion. It soon arrived. I got a phone call from the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, asking if we could put on a daytime display to celebrate Diwali. They were expecting a very special guest, HM the Queen. I will always remember seeing all these parachutes floating out of the sky and HM putting her hand out to try and catch one!
1990 – A Home of Our Own
I’d started the business from my home in Hertfordshire, which I renamed Rocket House. But with an increasingly nervous wife – fireworks kept appearing in any spare space we had – it was time to move out. After a couple of seasons based on local farms I finally found a permanent base in the village of Pepperstock on the Herts/Beds border where a 16-acre site had become available. I renamed it Rocket Park and it has been our home ever since.
1992 – SKY TV and a very hairy moment
I was thrilled to get a call from Sky TV asking us to provide the fireworks for the launch of Monday Night Football. Our first show at Manchester City was only a qualified success and I knew we’d have to perform better the following week at Southampton. It was a filthy, wet Bank Holiday night. We were firing from a postage stamp sized school playground and I was so nervous I couldn’t watch. The display looked spectacular on TV and we were back in favour. But the display did have repercussions. You can still find an entry on a web site called Premier League Football UK where it says a stray rocket landed in a petrol station. Not true but why let the facts get in the way of a good story!
1995 – Our 10th anniversary and a date with the Troggs
Wild Thing has always been one of my favourite pop songs, so when it came to celebrating our 10th birthday I decided to push the boat out and book The Troggs. It was crazy money but worth every penny to meet the late great Reg Presley and hear him belt out Wild Thing. The only damper on the evening was that it was so foggy our celebration display disappeared into the dense and murky sky.
1997 – Winners of the first British Fireworks Championship
We were invited to take part in the inaugural BFC in Plymouth. I was on holiday in France at the time and it was only when I got back that I heard the news. How did we do it? Three things: we were on last, which was a huge advantage; we finished with a 16-inch shell which was so
big and amazing it got the biggest cheer of the competition; and we had a furry toy dog mascot which we placed on top of the 16. Miraculousl
y we later found him, slightly singed but intact out on the breakwater. We called him Lucky.
To celebrate I went out and bought the number plate 5 NOV. To judge by the many admiring comments and phone calls it has generated, it was the best £10,000 I ever spent!
1997 – London New Year’s Eve
Not many people know this: long before Groupe F, Kimbolton and Titanium took over this prestigious event we were there first. I could see it was a firework celebration waiting to happen but how to crack it? A begging letter to the London Evening Standard did the trick. They agreed to put up £25,000 to sponsor the event and so on 31st December 1997 we staged London’s first New Year spectacular. It was a great success and I was sure it would put us in pole position for the forthcoming Millennium celebrations. But the following year the City of London Police vetoed our plans for a repeat show on the grounds that they couldn’t afford to police it. The opportunity was lost and the following year Bob Geldof brought in the Australian Syd Howard to mastermind the much derided River of Fire. How I hate Sir Bob!
1999 –Millennium Fever
We decided to refuse Syd Howard’s miserly offer to be one of his Millennium crews. Instead we were lucky to be offered the British Gas Millennium concert at Greenwich, alongside dozens more celebration events, on the biggest money-spinning night in firework history.
2006 – World record
We failed to impress at the 10th anniversary British Fireworks Champion of Champions competition in Plymouth. But we still went home on top of the world. We were invited to try and create a new world rocket record – more than 50,000 rockets launched in 20 seconds.
The noise was phenomenal. We were Guinness World Record holders.
2007 – Our biggest display
What a great year this turned out to be. In March we were gifted the dream job of flying down to the Maldives. It was for a birthday party organised hy our good friends at the event company Banana Split. George Michael topped the bill and we were a close second! It was an unforgettable experience.
Meanwhile we’d been working with Liverpool City Council throughout the decade in preparation for their bid to become European Capital of Culture. When they were awarded the title we were appointed firework contractors for the curtain-raiser – a £250,000 celebration of the city’s 800th birthday. Wirelessly fired from the roofs of the city’s two cathedrals, the waterfront and a barge on the Mersey this was a hugely ambitious show. It was a beautiful, warm August evening with a bright full moon to add to the magic. A massive crowd turned out to watch and we gave them a magical display. Our Display Director Steve Boothman said he aged 30 years during that 30 minutes.
2009 – The Bournemouth rocket disaster
No one likes talking about the things that go wrong but we couldn’t avoid it in 2009. Bournemouth Council asked us to try and beat the world record we created in Plymouth. We loaded more than 100,000 rockets into their launching crates and laced the fuses with enough quickmatch to ensure almost instant ignition. We figured that 100,000 rockets would take some rapid firing to get them all up in 20 seconds. In the event they blasted off in less than 6.
Our team were convinced we’d beaten the record. It was only on their return to shore, when they received a somewhat hostile reception from the audience, that they realised all was not well. We spent the next few days in lockdown as the media had a field day with stories of the rockets all exploding at once and the barge catching fire. Neither in fact was true but it was nevertheless a PR disaster. The only crumb of comfort I could take was that in the Daily Mirror’s Top 10 Disappointments of 2009 we came top. At least we won something!
2011 – Raising the roof at Hatfield House
We were thrilled to get the job helping historic Hatfield House celebrate its 400th anniversary. It was every firework enthusiast’s dream: firing a show off the roof of a building that’s older than Big Ben and Tower Bridge. The display looked stunning and we were delighted to receive a letter of thanks from the owner, Lord Salisbury, saying it had exceeded ‘my wildest expectations.’
2014 – Mixing with Arnie and co at Cannes
Now and again we get a show that gives us all a big buzz. One such was the launch of the new Expendables movie at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. An event organizer I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years called out of the blue and gave us the job. There we were, rubbing shoulders with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford & co at the After Show party and loving every minute.
Another triumph was our adaptation of Warhorse, the epic story of a Devon horse thrust into the horrors of the First World War. We staged it at Windsor Racecourse with live horses and special effects including a German ‘tank’! What made it special was the spontaneous audience applause at the end when we fired up thousands of red ‘poppy’ stars.
2015 – Winning the British Fireworks Championship a second time
Our 30th anniversary year was capped by winning the British Fireworks Championship again – a day that started in Plymouth with torrential rain and high winds but ended in the warm glow of success when the result was announced. None of our successes could have been achieved without the support and enthusiasm of the hugely talented team it’s been my fortune to work with all these years. We’re still all fired up, waiting for the next phone call that could take us anywhere from the Maldives to Minehead. That’s what I love about fireworks.
2020 – Celebrating our 35th anniversary
Another 5 years on and now we are 35. We’ve continued to ride the roller coaster on the wheel of fortune! Up one minute and down the next. In 2017 we had the good fortune to be appointed by Foster + Partners, founded by the renowned architect Sir Norman Foster, to celebrate the firm’s 5oth anniversary with a display on the Thames. A big thrill to be standing next to the great man himself as fireworks filled the sky. It was the first time we’d used a new matrix firing system that enables us to project the figure 50 in a fiery finale. We were looking in great shape as we headed into 2019 and then the pandemic struck. Not to beaten we hunkered own, did the few displays that we could do and came out the other side with pretty much a full roster of shows in 2021, including a spectacular series at Warwick Castle.
With Josh, Nish and 5 NOV
There we were in 2022 and the place was abuzz with the visit of TV comedians Josh Widdicombe and Nish Kumar for a new series, Hold the Front Page. Then, suddenly, we were out of the frying pan and into the fire! The great heatwave ripped through our summer display calendar as event organisers cancelled for fear of the fire risk. How I wished it would rain!
2025 – Celebrating 40 Years of Thrills
Well we made it! Another five years have sped by and we’re still buzzing with ideas and enthusiasm. One of the most innovative developments in our sector has been the advent drone shows. To be honest, I can’t get excited. They look great on tv but when I see the sky high cost, it’s obvious they’re way out of most pockets. No, I’ll leave drones to the tech bros who have greater faith in their future.
I’m much more excited about our expanding laser business. Although the demand for organised fireworks displays shows no sign of abating – you can’t beat the flash and bang of fireworks – many schools are asking us to stage laser displays as part of their Christmas Fair fund-raisers. With added entertainment of kids’ favourites, like snow and bubble machines, our Winter Wonderland shows are proving a big hit.
None of our successes could have been achieved without the support, dedication and professionalism of the amazing team of pyrotechnicians and backroom staff it has been my good fortune to work with all these years. And, of course, without the hundreds of amazing clients who have put their faith in us this past 40 years. Thank you, everyone.
As we head into our 5th decade, we’re still all fired up, waiting for the phone call that could take us anywhere from Minehead to the Maldives. That’s what I love about fireworks.