Below is Part Two of our interview with Jack Valentine, Project Liaison Director and founder of TopTributes Event Management, but first, a bit more about what we do:

There are many kinds of events – Personal events such as weddings, stag and hen parties, birthday and anniversary parties and also commercial events such as those staged by industry, charities, societies and other groups.

A commercial event is an opportunity to market your organisation in an exciting way involving the public.

Top Tributes Event Management identifies your target audience, devises the event concept, plans the logistics, coordinates the technical aspects, and stages your event.

A special public event is an excellent way of communicating with existing and potential clients, and we can even target your audience with press releases to generate media coverage which could reach thousands or even millions of other people, people you can then eventually reach face-to-face with your product or message at the actual event.

TopTributes are the experts at the creative, technical and logistical elements that help an event succeed, and can tailor an event especially for you, taking everything into account such as accommodation, entertainment and transport.

Jack - How did you start in the event management business?

"I’ve always sung, but the business angle grew with it. I’ve always managed myself and I’ve always viewed a performance as something that should ideally be a complete show, more than just some bloke getting up to sing a few songs. Then one day, when I was nearly 21, I sat down to write out the invitations to my 21st birthday party. I was a musician, and I realized that one or two of my guests were musicians too, so I thought, why not make the party a musical occasion? Then I phoned around a few other friends and asked them for their input on what they’d like to see (or hear) at a party – Eventually we settled on a sort of open-mic night, with even non-musical guests performing songs they’d actually rehearsed for the occasion. I even got jugglers, dancers and acrobats to come along."

"In the end we
got so many people involved - I trashed my original printed invitations and instead used a cartoon my mother drew. It made it all more personal. It was the dawn of the ‘Theme Party’ age. In essence it was really a karaoke night, except that this was ten years before karaoke existed in the UK."

"The point was that everyone afterwards went home feeling like a star, feeling they’d been included in something very special and unique. And I realized then that this was how all parties should be, and that I’d basically just planned my first corporate event.”

So, what are the secret ingredients of a successful event?

“It’s got to be fun, it’s got to feel inclusive and involving for the guests, (though without condescendingly forcing them into an old-fashioned knees-up – We’re anything but old-fashioned) and it’s got to feel like the best. If you value yourself, then you’ll value the effort and capital that’s invested in your party, wedding, corporate event or whatever.”

Why do you think people come to you to organize their events and entertainment?

“Firstly, it’s the
same reason Bob Geldof was the bloke to do Live Aid - I’ve got a little black book with all the telephone numbers in it. I’ve worked the live entertainment circuit from Lands End to John-O-Groats and from London to Las Vegas, and I know what’s out there, who’s hot and who’s not."

"Secondly, I’m an entertainer myself – I know what audiences want, and I know what performers need to deliver their best performance."

" Thirdly, my commercial background is in retail sales and service provision, and I’ve worked for the best – My first paid job, working holidays during university, was for Harrods. At a young and impressionable age, that lays a foundation in you for top quality service, what it is, and how to give it. Service is what it’s all about.”

We finish our drinks, I grab a fistful of peanuts from the bar, which as usual is the closest I’m going to get to lunch today, and follow Jack down to the Savoy ballroom where he still has some details to sort before the show. The dance-floor is mostly taken up by thirty or so massive circular dining tables.

“Won’t people want to dance?”
I ask.

“They will, and they do”, says Jack, with the smooth assurance of a seasoned professional who knows how to handle an audience even before they arrive. “But the idea of my Sinatra Savoy shows is to recreate a 1950’s Las Vegas supper club environment like at The Sands casino – The guests back then would

simply dine, drink, flirt, listen to Frank, and quietly discuss who to whack next. If they wanted to dance, they’d go on somewhere else up the Strip".

Jack gets up
on stage for a soundcheck and sings a few bars of ‘Moonlight in Vermont’, which he informs me is going to be the tricky one, sound-wise, because of its quieter vocal delivery. He’s not pleased with it yet, so while the sound engineer twiddles some more knobs I ask Jack something that occurred to me while I’d watched him up on stage at the mic:

You’re known as a singer and impresario, with a troupe of musical performers in your famous ‘phone book’, a manager and provider of chiefly musical entertainment – But don’t you provide much more than music?

“We certainly do – TopTributes is a Total Event Management company – We’ve got solutions and packages available for every kind of event. For example, we’ll plan your entire wedding – Not just the live music – If you want, you needn’t have any music at all – Fine with me. But we’ll organize the whole thing for you anyway –

"We'll organize
the venue, (for the service as well as the reception) the cake, the flowers, the cars, the hotels, the dress, the photographer, the video, everything. The rings too, if you want –

"Where are you gonna find a raw diamond specially cut into its own setting if you don’t know your way around Hatton Garden? Who ya gonna call? TopTributes, that’s who."

"If it’s a church wedding, we’ll even remember to tip the verger for you. Nobody else does. When TopTributes manages a wedding for you, our aim is to remove all stress and problems from you on the day. The only person crying will be the bride’s mum."

"Our slogan is ‘More than just music’. That sounds disparaging to music, but what it means really is ‘Music as a beginning’. Because music, like the song says, was my first love, and as a singer, a live entertainer, music was what got me into the event management business – It was the path that I took towards recognizing people’s needs on those occasions when they want to have fun with a few (or a few thousand) chosen friends in public. Because that’s what parties and weddings and rock gigs and entertainment events boil down to – Having fun in public. And that has its own special challenges which increasingly people are now recognizing should be given to professionals to handle -

"I am one of those professionals, and that’s what my company TopTributes delivers – Event Management. It’s a very new industry, a 21st century industry, and in this new digital age when high quality entertainment and stuff like contact with celebrities can be had almost on tap at the click of a mouse, public expectations of real-life live events such as parties, festivals, weddings and corporate events are now very high. People today expect to be entertained, lavishly, professionally and without a hitch. I provide that.”

“If you look up ‘entertainment’ in a dictionary, it says ‘to provide amusement and pleasure to an audience, and hospitality to guests'. It also says ‘taking an idea seriously’. Well that’s what I do –

"If you’ve got a dream you want fulfilling and you want, say, five hundred other hand-picked guests to share that pleasure with you, I take that commission very seriously, and make it a reality for you. Like the song says: “Let me entertain you!”

And funnily enough TopTributes.com can provide you with a Robbie Williams look-alike to sing the song, or Jack at TopTributes can even, if the price is right, conceivably get you Robbie Williams himself. You only need one telephone number to make the dream happen...

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