Yup, you read that right- Bearded Baby Spice! If you're not already well aware, on Friday 12th July our industry gathered for the annual Agents Giving Summer Ball at the iconic Epsom Downs Racecourse. Agents Giving is our industry charity, it seeks to encourage, support and promote agents and their suppliers across the UK in their charitable endeavours. The Summer Ball is one of Agent's Giving key fundraising events- alongside a chosen charity which, this year, was The Trussel Trust who support over 1,200 food bank centres across the UK.
Agents Giving is a vital part of how our industry gives back- both to local communities and initiatives and to large scale entities like The Trussel Trust. Phil Spencer, who many will know as the Co-Host of Location Location Location and Love It or List It (but, to us, will always be The ESTAS presenter) is the charity Patron. The charity is also supported by the Board and Regional Ambassadors that reads like a veritable 'who's who' of our industry including the likes of David Newnes, Nathan Emerson, Gareth Samples, Fran Giltinan, Debbie Davies, Peter Knight, Spencer Lawrence and Simon Whale.
Monies are raised through several activities at the Ball including ticket sales, corporate sponsorship, raffles, charity auctions and the all important 'industry performances' who all seek to raise sponsorship for their efforts. Whilst in recent years this is usually in the form of 'Agents Strictly' (which I took part in 2 years ago spending months rehearsing our Rock'n'Roll ballroom dance routine before performing in front of our industry), this year saw the return of 'Agents Got Talent'.
For the third time in just 6 years, I found myself once again throwing my hat in the ring for this year's performances. After singing Bruno Mars' 'Uptown Funk' in 2020 and Ballroom Dancing in 2022- nothing could possibly be daunting after that right? Wrong!
In the infinite wisdom of co-conspirator Ben Madden, it was decided that what this year's event REALLY needed was a performance by........The Spice Boys! I mean, what could possible go wrong!? 5 lads from across the industry donning frocks and attempting choreographed dance in front of our industry all in the name of charity.
The honest truth is the 5 of us (Ben Madden, Simon Whale, Chris Buckler, Dan Madden and I) agreed to undertake this challenge thinking it would be easy to 'slap something together' and then perform in front of the great and good of our industry. With the ink on our contracts (not really) well and truly dry, as the event approached, our naive optimism quickly turned to mild panic as we became increasingly concerned about just what we would subject our audience (and, potentially, our future careers) to.
On the day, we spent 3 hours being marched through our choreography by the most brilliant (and slightly terrifying) professional dance instructor- who somehow managed (through her shouts and our sweat) to turn us from a stumbling chaotic mess to thinking we had a chance at maybe, just maybe, winning the competition.
All of us had made quite spectacular efforts with our outfits and, although nerves meant some mistakes crept into our actual performance, we had fun and the audience had an absolute blast. We didn't win- and that's fine, it was taking part, supporting our industry, our charities and having a blast that really mattered- with Joe Rylett being the worthy winner after a spectacular performance of David Gray's Babylon. What I am immensely proud of, is that our act raised an impressive £2,341 (to date- we are still taking donations) which was substantially over our target of £1,000 and did see us 'win' the amounts raised by performers on the day. Together we raised nearly £8,000 (again- to date) just for our performances.
A silver lining of the evening saw my metallic shoes with light-up soles (bought especially for the performance) auctioned off in the Charity Auction immediately after raising another £200 for these great causes!
A great night was had, many laughs and we certainly entertained our audience (if slightly traumatising some with what they witnessed! As for the performance itself, well (if you're brave enough to) you draw your own conclusions.....
Our fundraising page is still open so whether you loved or loathed what we did- please give generously so that we can help support those most in need and support our industry, as a whole, do this better than ever before here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/spiceboysgottalent
