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The annual Christmas fun-fair in Leicester Square |
Christmas fun-fair faces a rival bidder
Calls for changes to attraction that ‘attracts drunks’
EVERY Christmas Leicester Square throngs with festive fun-seekers who come to enjoy the coconut shys, candy floss and carousels of the fairground.
For two weeks, doe-eyed teens flirt on the dodgems, fathers school their sons in tin-can alley, little girls stumble under the weight of prized cuddly toys and everyone goes home a sickly shade of green but happy.
But nearby residents don’t seem to think so. If they have their way it could be a case of the last waltzer and no ghost train home for the annual landmark institution run by Bob Wilson’s Fun-fairs.
They insist they are not being scrooges, but that the fair has stopped attracting the crowd it was meant for, and is instead being hijacked by boozy yobs and troublemakers.
Colin Bennett, chairman of the Leicester Square Association, claimed the fair has “had its day”.
“We don’t want the fair in the square anymore,” he said. “It has had its day. Wilsons have done their best, but it has lost its way.
“It attracts the wrong type of people and just gets overrun with drunks.
“It’s time to see something different and try and bring back the families. Christmas is about the family, but you hardly see any families at the fair.
“There is nothing particularly festive about the fair. There’s no reason why it should be there.”
For the first time in more than 20 years another group is bidding to take over the two-week pitch.
Until now Wilsons has run the show unchallenged. Now the group overseeing the square’s £18million regeneration, Heart of London Business Alliance, have thrown their hat into the ring, proposing a rival attraction.
According to insiders, the two groups are locked in a bidding war to secure the pitch, which reportedly makes the council more than £100,000 a year. Heart of London has confirmed it is planning a “winter festival” that will be more “Christmassy” than the fair.
Heart of London chief executive Sarah Porter said: “As good as the fair has been, we want to try and do something different, to make it more Christmassy. The theme is winter experience.
“We can’t say much more than that at the moment other than it will be free and there will be a lot of snow, ice and magic.”
But the Bob Wilson camp is not conceding defeat, promising the fair will return.
Manager and owner William Wilson said: “It’s utter nonsense to say we aren’t family friendly. It’s a fairground and that’s what we do. We are in the talks with the council and I can safely say it’s not a matter of if we come back but when.” |
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