Roll Up! Roll Up! – Neill & Brown Celebrates a Show-Stopping 100 years!

On Saturday 1st July Neill & Brown celebrated our Centenary year in true show-stopping style at the Willerby Manor hotel.

Hosted by CEO, Peter Brown and MD, Colin Moody, guests were welcomed from as far afield as the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland and Lithuania. Customers, agents, suppliers and staff from past and present all came together to celebrate 100 years in business.

Our “All the Fun of the Fair” theme had visitors greeted with a visual feast of circus stilt-walkers and fire breathers, and the fun didn’t stop there with the room filled with balloons, sweet stalls, crazy mirrors and a specially commissioned fish and chip stall.

Getting proceedings underway, public speaker, Nicky Pattinson greeted our guests and lauded our home city of Hull with some nods to memorable residents and a few “interesting” photos of members of staff collected from a few years ago.

After a few words of thanks from our CEO, Peter Brown, locally renowned theatre group, SHE Productions, took to the stage to perform a hilarious tribute to the late, great Victoria Wood. Their hysterical set, took in snippets of some of Victoria Wood’s most well-known sketches, culminating in a rendition of her side-splitting ode to marital relations, “Let’s Do It”!

Our MD, Colin Moody, took to the stage to say some words of thanks and gave us an insight into Peter Brown’s beginnings with Neill & Brown 52 years ago. Colin also highlighted how important family is to the family run firm; it’s that support that keeps the company’s values strong.

We were then ushered into the gardens for a performance from the awesome and breath-taking Dr. Phantasma’s Sideshow. This traditional and, often scary show, brought us acts breathing fire, climbing ladders of swords, juggling with chainsaws and a performer who did things with a nine inch nail that brought tears to the eyes!

Throughout the evening guests were invited to get into a specially designed photo booth created to replicate our fantastic Centenary cabs.

The evening was brought to a climactic close with plenty of hip-swivelling as our guests danced the night away with the award-winning Elvis Presley impersonator, Steve Caprice.

All in all, it was a night that few will forget in a hurry. Here’s to the next hundred years!

To view the whole gallery of photos from the night – click here

Photos by Neil Holmes Photography