The Land Rover Enthusiast Show, Billing Aquadrome, 19-21st July 2002

At this point last year the question "What's a Billing?" was posed, and the answer was:

"Take millions (well, lots and lots and lots without a doubt) of Land Rovers, add their owners, knead well together into an excitable froth, pour into a ready-mixed base of several hundred acres of landscape, add sun, rainwater and mud and stir gently for three days. The result is the Land Rover Enthusiast Show."

For 2002 the recipe has been improved slightly - take out the rain and mud and add greater degrees of hotter sun.

Despite the show only officially running from Friday to Sunday, the EMLRA stand was occupied as early as Tuesday by Kevin McGeough and his IIA Ambulance. His peace and quiet was shattered on Wednesday initially by Mike Allmey arriving with the 101 Ambulance and then by Wayne Davies arriving with a non-Land Rover (just for a change) . For obvious reasons, this was hidden by placing it behind his tent on the Craddocks stand. The non Land Rover that is, not the tent.

Peter Barratt with his Intercept 101 arrived Thursday morning, so from this point on the stand was gradually able to take shape, a process further enabled when Dave and Liz Simpkins arrived with the Kit Shelter Dining 1A (otherwise known as an ex-Scouts tent flysheet with associated ropes and poles).

By the time Billing officially started the EMLRA stand was looking more intended than accidental, containing between nine to eleven vehicles as people came and went. Billing management has gone to some lengths to ensure that stands couldn't expand beyond their designated boundaries by marking the grass with lots of white paint. Even so, we still had to bend the lines in order to accommodate those who turned up. Einstein had a theory about how the shortest route between two points is a curve; without claiming to understand any of the maths involved, EMLRA are now highly adept at demonstrating this theory. It works for turf anyway.

The Friday afternoon lineup:
SIIA Ambulance, 101 Ambulance, 101 EW, SIIA Ambulance, SIII Winterised Lightweight, SIII 109 FFR, SIII FFR Lightweight, 110 V8 EOD, 101 GS

The first batch of the Billing Contingent arrived late Friday - Dave Fish, Daniel Polak and Marijn van der Himst. Daniel also bought with him a precious cargo, the fist batch of the NEW! EMLRA tee-shirts in dark green with embroidered logo. There was an ugly rumour that there was a civilian Range Rover on display.

The "civilian" Range Rover is actually an ex-SAS vehicle, modified by Land Rover Special Vehicles for the purposes of inserting black-clad heavily-armed gentlemen into aircraft or buildings. The owner, Dave Wilson (in the red tee-shirt top left and black outfit bottom right) brought it along to the LRW Eastnor Castle event and very sensibly joined there and then. While it has a military registration, it would never have worn it - so we had a very non-military looking vehicle on the front row of the stand that is only marginally more common than Peter Barratt's EW101.

Sunday - and our allotted slot in the arena with David Bowyer. Whenever I had walked past the arena during the weekend I had noticed that inbound clubs were merely driving in and lining up, so I had no other expectations. However, it appeared that David did. The EMLRA entry into the arena was greeted with suitably stirring military music (complete with dive-bomber effects) and the instruction for us to all drive round in a circle. This was more complicated that it may first sound, as the convoy length was equal to the circumference of the arena. So it looked rather like the M25 on a Friday afternoon - hot, slow and noisy. After two circuits - and about half an hour - David lined us up with inch-perfect precision into a long arc.

Regular viewers may remember that last year David personally interviewed every driver in the line-up, meaning we were there for some time. This year he had a different plan - he invited someone from the Club to do this job for him. Colin Voss had filled this role last year, Peter Barratt had done so at length at LRW Eastnor... Chairman Dave felt eyes upon him. Which is why Secretary Daniel Polak suddenly found himself standing next to Mr Bowyer and having a radio mic stuffed up his noz.

Daniel now had the highly unenviable task of interviewing every Club member present in, some of whom he'd only just met, in front of several hundred people. To make the task even less enviable, it should perhaps be pointed out to those who have not met him that Daniel is from The Netherlands, thereby making English a second language. Any volunteers to try this exercise in Amsterdam?

To his eternal credit, Daniel made a first rate job of the display, even going so far as telling the new and proud owner of a wading Ninety the outline order of things that have to be done after wading has happened - which was All New Information to the owner!

But his highest score was achieved when he arrived at Dave and Liz Simpkins with their 110 V8. The scripts, had there been one, would have looked like this:

POLAK: Tell me Dave, how does a military Land Rover differ from a civilian one?

SIMPKINS: (SFX: Tumbleweed blowing across open desert) Er, well...

After a bit of stalling and prompting the answer was worked out and Dave went to have a bit of lie down in the back of the 110.

Daniel's last act was at David Bowyer's request, and that was to select the Best of Display vehicle...

... which went to Man In Black Dave Wilson and his SAS Range Rover. Well, would you argue with him?

The final word should go to LRE and David Bowyer, as they were so impressed by Daniel's performance they awarded him the cup for being the Best Club Commentator.