It was August 1972 and the annual Tyneside Summer Exhibition was up and running at Newcastle's Exhibition Park.
Our photograph from 50 years ago shows Evening Chronicle employees, Brenda Marshall and Sandy Murray, who were running the Chronicle display at the event, and two Coldstream Guards, Ronald Fields and Michael Franks, who were on a recruiting drive for the famous army regiment.
For Geordies of a certain age, the yearly exhibition with its funfair, music, trade shows, farming displays, sheep shearing, Red Arrows displays and much more., will evoke fond memories. It was especially popular in the '70s, attracting 180,000 people over five days in 1973, while three years later a record 186,000 visitors flocked there.
READ MORE: Tyneside in the 1920s - 10 photographs
The Exhibition Park, on part of the sprawling Town Moor, is aptly named. In 1887, during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the Royal Mining, Engineering, and Industrial Exhibition took place at the location. Then, in 1929, the Prince of Wales - later Edward VIII - opened the North East Coast Exhibition which ran between May and October, and attracted four million people.
The Tyneside Summer Exhibition ran from 1963 to 1987 and aimed to celebrate and continue the success of those earlier exhibitions. Each year it took place over five days, Tuesday to Saturday, and had five main component sections.
The “family entertainment” section featured the likes of the Red Arrows team, the Parachute Regiment, Army motorcycle teams and the regimental band of the Blues and Royals. There were also local pipe bands and contests for juvenile jazz bands to thrill the crowds.
A general trades section, housed in a marquee, 500ft by 90ft, hosted a state-of-the-art display of domestic utilities, fridges, freezers, cookers, home improvements, DIY, leisure clothing, with all sorts of stalls selling pretty well everything under the sun.
The agricultural section, under the umbrella of the Wansbeck Society, included cattle, sheep, and horse displays, with full-day arena events on the Royal Show site, featuring sheepdogs, show jumping and pony gymkhanas being particularly popular.
There was a National Farmers Union section where another large marquee hosted home-produced foods, fashion parades - of usually wool-based garments - and cookery demonstrations which, like the fashion shows, were extremely popular.
And there was also the city flower show, first held in 1947. By the 1960s, there was £1,500 in prize money, attracting 20 large growers, plus over 1,000 entries in various amateur classes.
Over time and moving into the 1980s, however, the annual crowds began to thin and, after losing money, the last Tyneside Summer Exhibition was held in 1987.
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