VIEW FROM THE FIELD

briefly, becoming chairman of an FT100 listed company. But these are the exceptions.

Most traders are fiercely independent and want to run a business with as little outside interference as possible. The force, as Obi Wan Kenobi put it, is strong with these traders, who are willing to endure nearly anything to keep their businesses going in the face of weather, economic recessions or acts of God.

“It’s a really great life,” I remember one trader telling me, “providing you don’t mind sleeping in a van, working all hours and getting paid basically nothing.” The trader in question is still doing business at this year’s fairs.

by 50 percent,” a cider producer told me at the East Anglian Game Fair this year. Surprise, surprise – to keep your traders happy, pander to their innate conservatism by never changing the dates of an event or their location.

Standing in a rainy, wind-swept showground in March, most traders would be lying if they denied ever thinking: “What on earth am I doing here?” Many will have been asked by their friends and family: “Why do you do it?”

It’s true. Some people stumble into trading at game fairs after an unsuccessful career in parliament, an unhappy love affair, finding out that being president of Brazil wasn’t for them, or after perpetrating fraud and, albeit

When I returned to the UK after running a business in Asia, I was unemployable. Doing business in China in wthe 1990s was entirely alien to the regulated UK arena. A one-man business at the game fairs seemed to be the only option for my buccaneering business style.

The game fairs also allow you to meet your clientele face-to-face – and, with a few dishonourable exceptions, they’re a great bunch. They may not remember you from year to year but they certainly remember your location at the show. “Moving traders without warning is tantamount to reducing their trade

If you make your own product, game fairs offer a valuable alternative to the internet and a means of finding out just what people think about your products. There are, however, downsides. Shoppers never stop at the tills in Marks & Spencer and haggle like camel traders, but they have no problem doing this at game fairs. A bluff and hearty “F*** off!” usually does the trick, especially if the customer enters into protracted bargaining and decides not to buy.

I suspect that as much as traders complain about the mud, trench foot, snow, wind, customers, government, taxes, other people’s dogs, children and so on, many enjoy for the social side of things. There is a strong sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps. Every evening traders entertain each other in their tents, caravans, mobile homes, LDV vans or just out in the open, leaning into the wind and rain.

“You’ll never die a wealthy man trading,” a trader once told me, “but you’ll have a lot of fun trying!”