Content area
Full Text
BIBA
Conference Preview
Andrew Newman takes a randomly informal look ahead to Bournemouth
Another year, another BIBA conference. Some things change, others remain uncannily familiar. My first visit set the tone for most later excursions - from Glasgow to Jersey, from Blackpool to Paris.
My introductory event at Harrogate `81 found me roomless at hotel reception, relegated somewhere else without notice. The fire alarm went off during the night, provoking the scene destined to become so familiar in the years to follow as well-known industry figures trooped downstairs bedecked in a kaleidoscopic range of nightwear.
Flash forward to Nottingham, when this annual nocturnal incendiary event saw one nightshirted chief executive plus wife in frilly negligee - taking an obscure fire exit that led them across the roof tops before they could retreat to ground level several streets away. Naturally it was raining. An enforced skirts-up, Wee Willie Winkle scamper back round the block reunited them with the rest of the `Pyjama Game' audition freezing outside the hotel. It was probably the white knuckles clutching the bulging briefcase that made them look like a bookie and his moll doing...