Partner Article

Danbro@Lytham Festival? Verdict: Dantastic!

Accountants rock - and Danbro Accounting step to the mighty Arena stage of Lytham Festival tonight to prove it.

It’s all over bar the screaming - and most of that happened last night for McBusted. The week has also seen other top name acts perform - Rae Morris, Tenors of Rock, Rebecca Ferguson, Scouting for Girls, Faithless, BillyOcean, East 17, Jimmy Somerville, Chesney Hawkes, Sinitta, McBusted and … many more.

So much for ‘sleepy’ Lytham, eh?

The action’s continued off stage on social media - with many of the visiting stars interacting not just with fans, the die hard regulars who would follow them to the ends of the earth, but first time concert goers, caught up in the excitement of it all.

And it’s not all about music. The week’s seen a succession of award winning comedians playing to the crowds too. And this year’s great breakthrough event, particularly for locals, has been the allied Festival of Stories, a celebration of literature, art, word play, story telling, with Julian Clary and cult children’s author Joseph Delaney among the attractions.

Six years since Cuffe & Taylor (Daniel Cuffe, Peter Taylor, two local lads made impresarios) re-ignited the Lytham Proms it’s gone from strength to strength. This year they forecast a £2m boost to the local economy - and hoped for 70k visitors. Even the accountants must have lost count last night - McBusted packed the Green. Not bad from an audience of 4500 when it started - and that beat Glastonbury’s starting out figure and they have been in the music biz for decades now.

It takes a monumental effort to transform Lytham Green into an open air festival venue and it couldn’t be done without the forbearance of locals - and while many have attended, others have simply sat in their gardens on these past few balmy evenings and listened to others going barmy. Some, such as football pundit Trevor Sinclair, have turned festival commentator … from his own home.

This has become Lancashire’s largest live music event. It has also become one of the most inclusive, all embracing events of its kind. This is the first year the event has spanned an entire week.

Danbro co-founders Damian and Helen Broughton - MD and director of people and standards respectively - sponsored the festival because they wanted to give something back to the local community which has made them so very welcome since the company relocated to its spectacular location on the edge of Lytham Green earlier this year. Danbro’s HQ Jubilee House used to be Birkenhead House, the base of the Land Registry for decades. It was at the heart of the community until its closure. It’s at the heart of the community today.

Those large windows of the firm’s own Green Room open onto a world of opportunities below and beyond …and the bigger picture is clear to see in the 210 members of staff (many of them locals), the £225m turnover, the 8000 clients right across the country, and the 2020 vision which aims to more than double those figures within five years. Lytham will be the cornerstone of that.

But Lytham Festival is an investment in community, and just as the company’s own choir, trained by Ian Hooper and co of GB Music Events, will once again sing fo their supper tonight - after doing much of the opening set for Tenors of Rock on Monday - other workers will join community groups for the clean up afterwards.

Meantime, the festival ends with a foot stomping flag waving roar rather than a whimper tonight, as Elaine Page, Marti Pellow, Jonathan Antoine, Laura Wright, AJ Brown, the Tootsie Rollers and many more present the ultimate al fresco night under the stars.

What’s more, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra will also present a very special and incredibly poignant tribute to one of Britain’s best loved entertainers - a medley of the hits of the late Cilla Black along with an onscreen montage of memorable moments.

And there’s likely to be another surprise surprise - hopefully featuring that choir. Whatever happens - we can promise you a ‘dantastic’ evening. You ain’t heard nothing yet!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jacqui Morley .