Tulip Festival

[Oisin]

The Tulip Festival has been mentioned in quite a few posts just in passing but can anyone tell me when the last one was held? I need to know for a piece I'm working on. It's fiction (well, it has to be off me, doesn't it?) but I need to get the historical background right.

All I can turn up on Google so far is a reference to the windmill being erected for the 1970 Tulip Fesitival, which doesn't ring very true to me as I believe it was there well before then.

So, over to you folks. There's no hurry so long as I can have the accurate information for this afternoon. :D

[Robert (the late )]

I can remember going in 1972 the year my first daughter was born.

[Alf]

There are some nice photos on Virtual Brum Cannon Hill 2006:)

[Oisin]

robert,
Thanks for the reply. I thought it was about then but I'll wait and see if anyone can come up with something definite.

Alf,
Yup, I saw them when I was looking it up. Although they're pictures of the tulip beds, they're not of the actual festival which, as robert suggests, was fell finished by then.

[billc]

On virtual brum it mentioned it started in 1960.
see link
http://www.virtualbrum.co.uk/tulips.htm

[Oisin]

Yup, I saw that too, thanks bill, but I need to know the last year it took place.

Keep 'em coming folks. ;)

[bestfriend]

my wife tells me that it was over 30 years ago that i worked at the tulip festival i did it two years on the trot for 3 days each time i was working for a food company (hot dog) soft drinks i was selling just over 1200 hots dogs per day and they cost 10 p each that's two bob in real money and i got 3p for each one i sold that was about one and a half p each but i made a good living it was hard work just standing for 14 hours per day i was by a big tent and i did swaps for tea and ham rolls and cake for hots dogs the boss would keep coming round and bringing us things that was was running out of pulse a loo stop there was six of use in the hole of the park but about 8pm on the night we gave it a rest had a bit of dinner then went round the fare at the back of the park good times good days i remember seeing a police display team on motorbikes there was all sorts of things going on but at the end of the night a big firework display ment it was shut down time

[bestfriend]

my wife tells me that 1973 was the last one held

[Oisin]

Thanks bestfriend. :great: I wonder how many young bucks woke up with a dicky stomach in the morning and blamed it on your hot dogs not the eight - eleven pints they'd had in the beer tent.
:lol:

[BOEDACCIA]

i have a photo of me, aged about 2, at the tulip festival...apparently it was taken by the evening mail and just beforehand a donkey had taken a chomp out of my tulips....i have no memory of this but it may explain why i look so annoyed lol

[the silver fox]

There was some sort of anniversary celebration a few years back; they even dusted down old Max Bygraves and brought him over from Australia. He had been at the first Tulip Festival, like me, where he had sung his big hit 'Tulips from Amsterdam'.
The fairgrounds at those early events were big and fantastic, they had a boxing booth and Wall of Death among the attractions - great fireworks displays too.
Ted