Join us live from Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City for the 2025 British Firework Championships “Champions of Champions”, in partnership with Associated British Ports, on Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th August 2025. Erin Black and Andy Hubble will present this year’s live global coverage on YouTube each evening from 9pm.
Six previous winners will showcase their very best work and battle to be crowned Champion of Champions, each putting on an extra special ten-minute display guaranteed to leave you awestruck! Three companies will be competing each night at 9.30pm, 9.50pm and 10.10pm for the coveted title of British Fireworks Championships “Champions of Champion” 2025.
Wednesday 13 August
1. Sonic Fireworks, from Devon
2. Skyburst the Firework Co. from Bristol
3. BBB Fireworks, from East Sussex
Thursday 14 August
1. Selstar Fireworks, from West Sussex
2. Fully Fused Fireworks, from Bedfordshire
3. 1st Galaxy Fireworks, from Nottingham
There you go. You see How much? There it is. Hila [Music] Oh my god. [Music] Good boy there. [Music] That’s it. Heat. Heat. This year, the British Fireworks Championships returns for a truly special edition, the Champion of Champions. Over two nights, the teams will be putting on six spectacular displays pushing the limits of creativity, passion, and sheer visual magic. From the first buzz to the final dazzling finale, the skies above Plymouth Sound will be filled with color, rhythm, and spectacular pyrochnic artistry. Who will rise above them to be crowned the ultimate winner, the champion of champions? The stage is set, the sky is ready, and you are watching. Get ready for the 2025 British Fireworks Championships. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hello, good evening and welcome to Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City and the home of the 2025 British Fireworks Championships. And this year it is the Champion of Champions sponsored by Associated British Ports who are the UK’s largest port operator. They own and operate Plymouth’s Milbay Docks which is a key hub for Britany Feries. Now, this is the 28th annual British Firework Championships hosted in Plymouth and it’s run in partnership with the Event Services Association and Plymouth City Council. So, welcome to the tens of thousands of people watching the event live here on Plymouth Hoe and the surrounding waterfront. Good evening. And of course a big hello to all of you watching all over the world on our YouTube live stream this evening from the USA to South Africa Australia to across Europe. You are all very welcome here tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you are joining us via the YouTube or Facebook live streams then we would love to hear from you on the online chat. So do drop us a message and we will try to give you a shout out over the course of the evening. Plymouth City Bus are once again the sponsors of the British Firework Championships Young People’s Choice Award for the third year in a row. And it was great to see the children getting involved last year and enjoying the judging of the fireworks displays themselves. And we’re also delighted to have Jeremiah’s Journey as the events official charity. Jeremiah’s Journey, if you don’t know, is a local bereiement charity dedicated to providing age appropriate therapeutic interventions to children, young people, and their families to ensure they have the support through sad and difficult times. And pleased to say we’re joined by Jeremiah Bear on stage here this evening. And I’m also delighted to say that I’m joined on stage by Andy Hubble, who we’re welcoming back to the British Fireworks Championships. He is the former chair of the British Pyrotenists Association and the managing director of Star Fireworks. He is here to guide both you and me through the next two nights. And I think it’s fair to say there’s nothing this man doesn’t know about an event like this. So Andy, thank you so much for being here again. How are you? I’m very good. Yeah, really excited to be here. There’s nothing like the bars of a champion of champions year and the competitions and these next two nights are going to be really really special. I’ve already been out today and seen some of the teams out there and they really are putting on a battle between each other. So, we’re really in for a big big set of fireworks displays and Plymouth is the place to be in the UK tonight and tomorrow night. Yeah, absolutely. This this kind of event comes around once every six years with the champion of champions. Um, of course, everyone that’s taking part will have known they were taking part since they won the last time round, but how much planning needs to go into putting on a display tonight? Well, the teams normally have around six months or so from the time that the names are drawn by the mayor. Um, that’s in a normal year and the time that they actually then get to put on their show here in August. And so six months is about the kind of time, but like you say, these teams, some of them actually the most the oldest one won in 2019, which is a fair while ago. So they’ve had six years to get ready for tonight. And we’re going to see that show tomorrow evening. Um, so yeah, it’s a bit of an unusual year. And the people that have the least amount of notice, well, they’ve had a year. Yeah, that’s last year’s winners, the Battle Bonfire Boys Fireworks Society. Um, and we’re actually going to be seeing them later tonight. Yes. One to look forward to, I think, along with all the others, of course. Now, you yourself have one champion of champions with Star Fireworks. So, as someone who’s been in this position before, how do you think the teams getting ready for tonight are feeling right about now? They’ll be feeling very nervous. It it took my company four years, four four attempts to actually win the British firework championships and then we went on to win the champion of champions in straight after that. So it was very exciting but it’s not an easy uh thing to do. They will be nervous. They’ll all be after the win they’ll really desperate to get it because you know being champion of champions in Great Britain is quite an accolade for them. There have only been three others so far in the history of the competition and here hopefully by the end of tomorrow night we will crown number four. Very exciting. Of course, everyone’s always pulling out the stops when they come to the British Firework Championships, but this one’s got a little extra on top. What would you say people need to keep their eyes out for? Is there any particular elements when it comes to maybe the judging technique? What What do you think people should be looking for tonight? I think the judges are really looking for something that’s going to set the show apart from the others. We’re all used to seeing some really pretty high standards here at Plymouth. Some incredible displays, but you really have to be top draw to be a British champion. They’ve all ticked that box, but now they’ve got to put on and make sure that their design is better than the next one. They’ve got better fireworks than the next one. They’ve got better rhythm and timing and they’ve got better patterns than the next one. And in fact, some of these shows that we’re going to see tonight, one of them, they’ve got a rhythm that we are going to recognize. I think we’ll come on to that later on, but that’s something the judges want to see something that’s different that sets it, not just an ordinary normal fireworks display. Yeah. Well, I wanted to touch on the judging element, of course, because there’s there’s a whole ream of things that go into judging the firework championships. We’ve got lay judges, we’ve got expert judges. Um, how how is it broken down? Okay, so we’ve we’ve got three different sets of judges uh here tonight. We have got three expert judges. So, these are people that are really experienced within the firework industry that they’ve got shows under their belts that have been in seen by some really large audiences in the UK and overseas as well. And those judges will be looking for one set of criteria, things like technical involvement, the range of products, the rhythm of the firework, the artistic style. And then we have lay judges. So these are people from the local community who are not necessarily experts on fireworks, but who are able to give an impression for the audience at home and the audience here on the hoe and they represent them. And often people in the audience will be looking for things like the wow factor. What makes them cheer? And that’s one thing that we’re going to be looking for tonight is which get the biggest cheers, which sequences are the best, which display gets the audience going with it the most. And that will be the late judges. And then we have the young person’s choice team, which are young people from the local community, and they are going to be making their own judgment and their own award as well that get awarded in this the ceremony. Excellent. Okay. Lot lots of components, but lots to look forward to. Let’s have a little look then at the teams that we’ve got for uh this evening and tomorrow. Of course, firing first tonight, we’ve got Sonic Fireworks. They are from Devon, and they won this competition back in 2022. Following them is Skyburst, the firework company from Bristol, and they were your 2023 winners. And with just 12 months to prepare, BBB Fireworks, who are from East Sussex and won last year. If we move on to tomorrow night, fourth in the running order in total, but your first ones, Cellstar Fireworks, they are from West Sussex. They’re actually the last champion of champions. So, a lot on their plate. They want to be uh trying to retain that. Fully Fused Fireworks will be going second on Thursday night. And last but not least, First Galaxy Fireworks, who are from Nottingham, and they won, as Andy said, way back in 2019. So, lots to look forward to there. Um, Andy, you know, when we look around at the breakwater here, it’s it’s difficult to put into perspective just how many fireworks go into the show. What are we talking? Hundreds, thousands, thousands, thousands. This this company here on the end of the breakwater that’s actually from where that light is all the way along is one company’s display and they have got something like 1,400 aerial shells bursting in the space of 10 minutes. Look at that. There’s an aerial shot of the same uh display and you can see that all the way up to that lighting tower that’s uh partway along. That’s one display. Then we’ve got the next display after the lighting tower and the next one after that. Look at all of those tubes. 1,400. And then at the front, we can see lots of smaller tubes nearer to the railing. And those are what we call single shot fireworks. That company’s got over a thousand of those. It’s It’s certainly a lot different there than what it ends up looking like in the sky. So, shall we take a moment to delve a little bit deeper and uh have a look at what happened when we visited earlier? Andy, we are here on Mount Batton Breakwater this morning, hours away from the Champion of Champions at the British Firework Championships. And this is what it looks like before thousands of fireworks are set off. When did the guys get here this morning? How long did the preparations last? They started at 7:00 this morning and it’ll probably take them 12 hours. Some teams are really on it. Um, and they can be done sort of mid-afternoon. Some teams have less fireworks to set up. Some teams have more complex displays, so it can vary and you can get to that crunch time, which we’ve seen before in the competition where competitors are getting close to 6, 7, 8:00 in the evening, and it ends up being all all hands on deck. Everybody puts in a hand because everybody wants to see the fireworks going off, real team spirit, everybody cooperating. But yeah, they’ll aim to have it by have it done by midafter afternoon if they can and maybe have a little bit of a relax before seeing what happens in the evening. We’ve got three teams firing on each night, six in total. So looking down, you know, the breakwater as we do now, it’s a little bit hard, I think, you know, on a layman’s eye to differentiate who is who. But for you looking at it, it’s it’s quite clear what each team are trying to set up and what they’re trying to achieve. Yeah, absolutely. You know, different teams will have a different strategy. They some teams may go for sheer volume of fireworks and the number. Other teams may focus on having some really high class fireworks like European products which are a lot more expensive than the Chinese products that that a lot of teams will be using. Um so and and the thing for us looking when we do at setting these things up is trying to sort of see what their strategy is, how it might turn out on the night, but you never know. You could see a team like this one that really has thrown the kitchen sink at it and they’ve brought so many fireworks. Surprised there’s anything left in the country for tomorrow night. Yeah. Or you could have a team that’s got real technical and real precision. But we we don’t know until we start firing it. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the shells themselves then, Andy, because they’ve got to be fired out of these tubes, which are all of various different sizes to accommodate the various different size shells we’ve got. And you’ve lucked out this is one of the biggest ones we’re going to be seeing. Yeah, this is the biggest size that we have down here at Plymouth. And it’s because if it was to burst on the ground, the stars need to be able to fall short of any of the buildings or any of the fallout zone that’s built around to keep people safe. and eight inch shells like this one. And this is a lovely Spanish shell. Um a shell of shells with salute one time. If they were going to uh fire one of these, it’s probably a finale shell. It’s probably one that’s going to be really really special that we’ll see towards the end of the show. This is when we get that huge bang, like a big shower. Yeah, absolutely. But this one has got 1.6 Six kilos of powder in it and just one firework going off. And you look at that. I mean, it’s about the same size as your head, isn’t it? You know, it’s really big firework. That was BBB who were firing third on night one. And I have to say for me personally, looking around, some of the tubes, some of the setups look a bit similar. I’m not able to tell the difference, but I know this is something we haven’t yet looked at, which is for from Sky Burst. Yeah, these are Roman candles. Okay, so this is an actual Roman candle. These ones are made by a company called Europa, Spanish company. Um, these particular candles have whistles with silver tails. It’s a 45 mm size. It It’s a repeater if you like. So, it fires the same effect time after time. And this one particular has 10 shots. And what we need to look out for with Roman candles is the quality of the candle. Because if you’ve got each of these tubes putting out 10 different shots, what you want is you want them to all fire simultaneously and keep firing simultaneously right from their first shot to their 10th. Okay? What you don’t want is for them to get the timing out and then having a bit of a starting good, nice and even going up, but then ending up with a mish mash. And what you expect with a a high quality product like this is that the timing should be good. Well, you can look out for that tonight when these repeaters are going off. Let’s talk finalees then to wrap up. Everyone’s got their own style as we’ve seen from looking down, but we’re kind of used to seeing these huge brocade displays. Is there a shorefire way to guarantee a good finale or is there room for a bit of creativity? I think you want something that gets bigger and bigger and builds and really takes the audience with it and then just fills the sky. Absolutely. Fill the sky with fireworks. And most of the teams will do that with uh a gold effect that we call brocade. We will see brocades throughout all six shows. I can guarantee it. They’ll add in noise and perhaps some flashing effects and perhaps a little bit of color. When my team did it all those years ago, we had brocade and blue which looked beautiful. Blue is a really hard color to make as well, isn’t it? It is. Absolutely is. Um you But if you’ve got a good blue, then use it. Absolutely. But we can have strobe and everything. It’s impossible to tell what they’re going to do from their brocade unless they tell us. And some of the teams have told us what they’re doing. So as each show goes through, we can sort of preview what to look out for. But you’re saying the bigger the better for the finale is the way that these teams are going to want to win. The classic Plymouth Brocade finale has won for many teams over the years. So that would be I think I think it would be really tough to not choose that if I was competing. Well, there we have it. Months of preparation, hours of planning here on the breakwater, and it will all come to fruition over the next couple of nights. So, join us for the British firework championships as they get ready to unfold. Well, we know Plymouth is a fantastic backdrop for the firework championships, but of course, there are certain limitations to being out on the breakwater, the amount of fireworks you can have. We saw there an 8 inch firework is the biggest we’ve got here tonight. But you compare that to a 48 inch one which we see elsewhere in the world. I mean, what is the difference looking at that in the sky? Oh, they’re huge, aren’t they? 48 in. You wouldn’t be holding that in your arms. That one’s certainly bigger than my head. I’d like to point out. No. So, we’re looking at um we’ve got some amazing pictures of Japanese and Maltese fireworks where they really are masters of what they create. Absolutely stunning. Here’s a Maltese fireworks factory. I’ve been lucky enough to go around this factory and and see this all for myself. But the Maltes, they make fireworks for their festivals and they call them their feast. Uh, and a feast in every little village has its own feast and they make them. Here we go. That string is holding that firework together and giving it extra strength. And here we’ve got some cylinder shells that are drying and getting ready for finishing off and adding into additional bits of fireworks. These are stars. Those are the stars that make the colored patterns in the sky. Okay. Um, here are a whole load of other manufactured products. A load of cylinder shells there. Look at those big ones right there. And those ones on the ground. Those are single shells. When we went out onto the breakwater today, you saw ball shells and little cylinder shells. Not as long as those ones. And here inside a shell, you can see stars around the outside, the yellow and the green. That was actually a smiley face shell. And then in the middle, this is what’s so interesting to me because when you look at the shells, I just envision them packed with explosives, but they are actually distributed in certain patterns and shapes and that’s how we get them in the sky. Yeah, these are master craftsmen. They really do know their uh their skill and what they’re doing and making stars here. It looks like a cement mixer. It’s not. It’s actually making the stars that we put into them. Uh there’s some black powder and some uh making various different effects there and smoothing in the powder into some tubes. And this here they press them into there to make some uh probably comets I imagine. Um it’s really really very clever. And the other thing that you can’t tell from these we look at these and these are black and that’s gunpowder in fact. We look at it. It’s all black but you can’t tell what color it is. Look at those stars drying in the sun there. Absolutely stunning. a nice silver color as well. I can’t tell you how good that silverish color is when you actually see it up close. But yeah, these black stars, but it’s like seeds. You can’t tell what a plant a seed’s going to make, is it? You can’t tell what color that star is going to be. And this is quite a intuitive way of getting everything, you know, in. They have the molds that are built the same shape. They can just, you know, pop them down into the tubes like this. There’s that’s a mechanical press that’s pushing everything in together really nicely. There he is. just topping everything up. Um, popping some uh gunpowder into the ends. And this green stuff is uh called visco fuse. And the uh these fuses are what take the fire into the little component that’s going to burst in the sky. And there they are. They’re making what we would call a a barrage or a cake there and putting the little tubes they’ve just been making into a bigger set of tubes that has fuses running in between each of them. Look at the size of it. And back there into the uh the room. I feel like I’ve been in that actual room, you know, when I look at it. And look at those. Look at those long tubes. One of those is just one shell and it’s made up of lots of different brakes. It’s like sandwiching together lots of the shells we saw today. Yeah. I mean, when when you look at something like that where it’s being made and also the event like we have here tonight, what are the biggest technical challenges then when it comes to preparing for an event like this? I think one of the biggest technical challenges is actually really simple and that’s just getting all the fireworks together in the first place. In today’s supply chain, some fireworks arrive quite late and I’ve heard that some fireworks for tonight’s shows only arrived yesterday. Now, can you imagine being in charge of the firework display and uh being told, “Yeah, it’ll be here tomorrow.” You know, it’s not like a delivery service. You’ve got a lot of trust. That’s probably the hardest one, actually. Um is getting all their stock together. Then they’ve got to design the show. Designing it really probably takes place after they’ve got a lot of the fireworks committed to and available. And then you’ve got to fuse it and prepare it. And a lot of the preparation would have taken place back at their base. And the final steps would have taken place here on Mount Batton Breakwater. I mean, we saw everybody down at the breakwater earlier when we were there, you know, matching the fuses in with the firing systems. they’ve got. And you said it could be as simple as wiring the wrong firework into the wrong section of the of the um you know firing element that could send a green firework when it’s supposed to be in the middle of a red display. Yeah. Yeah. It could be a bit of a problem if you had something like that. If you had somebody plugged the wrong thing in or put the wrong marking onto the firework, then that would be a real problem. But I can tell you, Erin, that as always, we have got our man down on the breakwater, Anthony Green, who is down there in amongst the teams, and he’s feeding back information into my ear as to what’s going on. Everything is going very calm, okay, very slow, uh, very methodically, no problems at all, and team one are getting ready to fire their show, which we’re expecting at 9. Perfect. Well, yeah, we are ticking ever closer to 9:30. So, it is Sonic Fireworks who are up first this evening. They are the Devonbased Firework Company, winners in 2022. And they’re also the twotime runnerups of the British Musical Firework Championship. So, can we expect to see maybe a bit of rhythm coming from them? Yeah, absolutely. U Mike Glover is the principal there at Sonic Fireworks. He’s been the designer of tonight’s show. Uh and it’s been set up and led by a team led by Rob Joliff. Um they have got uh celestial cascade is the theme of their uh display. A night of a thousand stars. Um lots of things that we can look out for in the show as it fires. And I can tell you that their firing system is armed and ready to go. So we’ve got six minutes to go. But they are ready. They’re nice and stable. They’re operating the Cobra firing system for anybody that knows about it. But here’s some things to look out for during some fuchsia colored strobe comets. So we all know what fuchsia is. Kind of pinky color. Strobe is a flashing star. So it’s going to flash on and off. So pink flashing stars from a company called Marty, which is a Spanish company. And they go then with pink a blue to pink strobe shells and a crackling sequence overhead. We have pillar mines. a pillar mine which will erupt with a column of stars looking like a a pillar up into the sky and then some jellyfish effects. One of the things we need to look out for tonight is a number of different shapes that are made. So look for the jellyfish in their show. Um we’ve got a dazzling white multi flash strobe sequence using an Italian parent series of shells. Parenti is a very famous manufacturer. Um, they do a lovely white strobe, so expect the sky to be filled with hundreds of thousands of little flashing, twinkling silver stars. So, they’re going for color, twinkling, shall we? Let’s go and hear from their spokesperson direct. And then I don’t I want to make sure we don’t miss any of it. So, let’s hear from them quickly now. Hi, I’m Spud from Sonic Fireworks. We are the Champions of 2022. We’re a local company based in Offcom. Uh, we’re firing first tonight. things to look out for in our display. We got some sea creatures that you’ll be able to spot in the sky. Um, we got some spectacular white multi flash sequences and some real nice multiolor strobing sequences as well. There you go. You’ve got all the insider intel. That is exactly what they want us to keep their eyes peeled for. Yeah. But they’ve also got a classic Plymouth gold brocade finale. And if you remember, the brocate crown shell is a shell that bursts with big trails of golden twinkling stars. We’re going to see a lot of those tonight. They’re really, really uh popular and they look awesome in a finale. So, they uh have a gold broket finale. And anybody that doesn’t like loud noises, I have to warn you that we have some of the loudest maroons allowed by the rules that are really going to echo across Plymouth Sound. A maroon is simply a bang. Okay. They have got some very big bands. Some of them are on the ground. Some of them are in the sky. Yes. Because did we look at some of these earlier where they’re hanging off these giant steel poles off the brake water and that is, you know, they’re just there ready to go. Great big solid cylinders full of what we call flash powder. Flash powder is what you need to make that bang. So you The funny thing of here about Plymouth is because we’re a safe distance away. It’s about 400 m between the breakwater and where the audience are watching from. Then we see the flash of the firework before we hear the bang, but that bang’s going to be loud tonight because Sonic have really thrown everything at it in terms of noise in their finale. Okay. So, everyone here tonight will be able to see when they need to put their fingers in their ears just before it actually happens. They’re celebrating their 30th anniversary this year and and they love a big finale. when when something like this coincides with a personal company event like the anniversary, does that kind of add a little bit of extra pizzazz that they want to show off? Yeah, I think so. I think that this is very special to them. Uh they brought some great fireworks here for us to see some things hopefully that we haven’t seen at all before. And in fact, I’m just hearing that we are getting the clearances. The King’s Harbor Master is checking the area. We have water marshals out there and a water exclusion zone which pleasure craft have to keep outside of and only when the king’s harbor master is happy that everything is clear. Do they give the clearance to event control here on Plymouth Hoe and event control gives the thumbs up to our adjudicator tonight Charlotte Wimship from the event services association. And in fact we’ve been given clearance and we’ve got the twominut countdown. Two minute countdown to Sonic Fireworks display. All right. Well, everybody get ready. Prepare yourselves. Just before we go to that, what does the launching of the display actually look like? Is it a press of a button or is it something different? It’s not really all that exciting, I have to tell you. It is just a press of a button. Usually, it says fire. They have to arm the system first, but we heard that it was armed about five minutes ago. Uh, so it’s been ready. So, as long as uh Mike Glover or whoever’s pressing the button tonight doesn’t have a nervous finger and sort of be okay. They could accidentally I have to keep my finger away from it when I’m firing one of these shows like this. You you don’t want to put have it too close just in case you and just in case you touch it. But yeah, they will be nervous and looking forward to it. And of course, this display is timed. It has to be exactly 10 minutes long. And if there are if it’s longer or shorter, there are penalties potentially awarded by the judges who are under the stewardship of gym windship from the event services association. He is with the panel of judges and making sure that everything is runs fairly there. Gosh. So they’ll have a stopwatch and everything. I could understand running over, but running under is interesting that that incurs. Well, we might get them running under if they have a firing system failure or if a firework blows up on the ground and it takes out all important cabling. The Cobra system doesn’t really use a lot of cabling, but if something like that happens, then yeah, you can lose part of a fireworks display. We will should hear about that though from our mole on the breakwater if there are any problems, but we could probably see it for ourselves as well. Well, it certainly sounds from the intel you’re getting that they are armed, ready to go, so we shouldn’t have any delays and probably in about 10 seconds time. Here we go. The countdown. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Sonic fireworks from Devon. [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Applause] All right, we are off for night one of the British Firework Championships. That was Sonic Fireworks from Devon. They say they love a big finale, Andy. And I think it’s fair to say they pulled the pin in the last 30 seconds there. Yeah, they did, didn’t they? We They said it was going to be the loudest that we’re actually allowed to fire here at Plymouth. And wow, that ending was massive. And those bangs, the really loud ones that were coming off at ground level that you could see, there was one that went off earlier on that you spotted. Um, and there were big ones going off, but it was Yeah. big brocade finale. We’re going to see more of those over the next two nights, I predict. Yeah. The the noise that we heard earlier on, do you think that was deliberate or do you think, you know, is this one of those situations where maybe something gets caught up in the other fireworks? It could be anything. It could be one on its own. That was fine. But I don’t think it detracted from the display at all. That was a beautiful show. And I saw some fireworks that I really really enjoyed there. The complimentary colors throughout that display. We started uh with uh red white near the start and we had some silver falling leaf shells and then some of those multi flash that we saw that no, you can’t fail to notice those Italian lovely beautiful shells. Um, there was a lovely turquoise shell with a kind of gentle silver spinners at the end, which I loved. Red and green strobe. Did you see the jellyfish, Erin? Yes. Yeah. Yes, they were really good. The jellyfish shells. I think we’re going to see some more animals and more shapes as the night goes on tonight. Um, we saw uh rings down near the bottom. Some beautifully formed rings um with strobes and colors. uh red and green strobe and red and green uh other effects as well. Um more silver multi flash, blue star with red strobe. We saw a lovely red and gold strobe sequence. Do you remember? It’s sort of a pinky gold uh uh sequence. I really enjoyed their single shot. So the single shot, these are the smaller tubes that were along the front of the site. One of the teams has got over a thousand and we saw those and we saw some pillar mines. Do you remember the pillar mines? Yeah. And they were color changing. Can you remember the color change? Oh gosh. Red, green, and blue that we were seeing. Yeah. Beautiful effects there. I won’t put you on the spot again. I promise you. Don’t worry. I want to try to take it all in as a uh as a as a lay well, not even a judge, but just as a lay person. And the other thing that I really loved um simple things like um there were some really green strobes. So strobe is the flashing effect. I do remember those. They were really green and they had other greener fireworks going off that were similar color and a lovely green and blue complimentary sequence after that. And then of course that big bro finale. And I think one of the other things that we can say here is that one of the things that we we we also know is that when there were big shells going off, they got a big crowd. Yes. Uh cheer from the audience. So everybody loves the big shell. But I can tell you, I’ve heard from Anthony Green that team two have armed their system. Oh wow. There was a small fire on site that has been dealt with. So we’re moving ahead very swiftly through to team two. So everything going very smoothly tonight. And beautiful weather for it, isn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember last year when we were doing it, we had a couple of instance where I think a few bits and pieces caught fire over on the breakwater and that all has to be dealt with. Whereas so far, touch wood, everything going quite smoothly. Yeah, the fires are a normal part of having a firework competition out on the breakwater. What happens is is after the firework, the firework functions normally, but it’s really still hot when it goes out and the the winds that we get out from the sea can blow across the hot tubes and really fan the embers so that they glow and then the firework catches fire. And so our teams are left dealing with these small fires and we won’t push on with the competition until those fires are put out because we just can’t do that during the middle of a show. So we want to get it all done at the start or the end of of a display. Yeah. Well, safety is so paramount. I mean, when you see the amount of explosives that are all down there in one place, you can understand why every precaution um needs to be had. Up next, we’ve got Skyburst, the firework company, who are from Bristol. Um, they won, well, they’ve been running since 1982, so they have got a lot of experience here, and they do over 300 professional displays a year. So, when you’ve got that kind of caliber behind you, it must be quite difficult to pick out new things for a competition like this. I don’t know. Alan Christie who is runs Sky the firework company. He was telling me earlier he’s been involved in fireworks for 45 years and judging by the lovely list of fireworks that he’s given me. I think he’s still finding new stuff even as uh you know even as the company uh is doing all these shows all around the world. So yeah um I know that Alan loves traveling and I remember seeing him out in Japan looking at the international symposium of fireworks. So, there’s a guy that is a true firework lover. And I think this second show is going to show us a different kind of display because we’ve got a lot of European material in it. The Europeans, the Italians, the Spanish, they make absolutely incredible fireworks. Um, lots of multicolors and the colors are really vivid. So, where we’ve seen reds that are kind of slightly more pinky, reds we will see that are really red. Is is that a way you’re able to differentiate where in the world the fireworks have come from. Is it a thing like the strength of the color or are there other telltale signs? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. The expert judges will be able to spot the high quality material. Um the alternative is that you use Chinese fireworks. Chinese make, you know, stupendous fireworks. They’re really, really good. The manufacturing quality is amazing. Their approach to health and safety and things um is is really really good. The the product quality is is excellent. But you still can’t beat the European products. And even companies like Disney World and things where a lot of us will see fireworks around the world, they will be buying fireworks from Europe for that quality. Oh wow. Um these guys in particular 2023 winners. Um when I spoke to Alan earlier, we will hear from him in just a moment, but I really liked he said something to me which was that he doesn’t like sky puke. um which he said was when you just chuck a load of fireworks up in the air and set them all off at once. He said if he has a particular shell that’s of a you know large volume, it’s going to set off with a big bang, he likes to give it the space it deserves in the sky. So do you think that’s something we’re going to be seeing from them? Yeah, we need to look out for that. If he’s given each of the really special shells a bit of breathing space, then yeah, I mean Alan Christie is a master craftsman at at fireworks. So I think yeah we can enjoy and I do remember two years ago when he won he was so emotional and we know that Skyburst have entered this competition many times and not won. So for them to win we were all really happy with it and now to be in the champion of champions I think they’re in with a shout. Okay. And as you said it clearly means a lot to them. You know when it comes to emotional it’s not just about getting another accolade in the box. They actually really care about I guess how people react to their displays too. Yeah absolutely. Um, I mean Allan just puts so much of himself into the display. I can tell you something. The man’s a cat lover. He has cats at home and really big ones. So, what have we got? We had jellyfish shells in the last display. This display we’ve got catface shells. Okay. So, look out for the cat faces in the sky, but we’ve just had from the adjudicator Charlotte Winship the twominute warning. Fantastic. Okay. Well, we’ve spoken a lot about Alan. So, let’s see him now and let him introduce their team this evening. I’m Alan Christie. I’m the director of Bristol based Skyburst, the firework company. We’d like to dedicate tonight’s display to Jace. We’ve got some fabulous European material um from Italy and also from Spain. Um our show, I think, has something for absolutely everybody in tonight. Um and we were the reigning champions in 2023. There we go. Alan also mentioning they’re dedicating this show to Jace who was a huge firework fanatic and helped a lot behind the scenes and before she sadly passed away a few years ago. So again like you said it’s it means a lot to them. It’s an emotional touch. It is very much. But we’ve got a rainbow color opening sequence. Spanish mines with Italian rainbow multi-break shells. Mosaic shells. Silver strobing to Italian 8 in strobes. I’ve got ghost pillar chase with Italian shells. Alan’s told me they have butterflies, spinners, and far fallus. We’ll talk about those later. Huge brocet waterfall sequence. Lovely big golden trails, multiple crossets, slat wheels. Look out for the slat wheels. These are big Katherine wheels. Will they work? Will they spin? Will they look wow enough from 400 meters away where the judges are? And listen for the howlers. All right. Sorry, the Hummers. Hummers. I love Hummers. They make a howling sound. A lovely a proper Hummer. And these are proper Hummers. I’m told made in the uh UK. Uh they’re going to be really good. Uh shapes and emojis, cats, smiley face, more jellyfish, multiolor effects, and a titanium brocade finale. All right, there’s so much in this. Um we’re well into the final minute and we’re just waiting for the final 10sec countdown before this Team 2 Skybur firework company begins their display. Okay, so it could be imminent. You rattled off a lot of stuff. We’ve got to get ready and look forward to and it will be nice to talk about it afterwards in a bit more detail. Any any update on the time? Yeah, I think we’re going into the countdown now. Any moment. I’m just waiting to hear you charge. Yeah, we’re any moment now. What are we at? Oh, yeah. Where we are. And look out for the red, amber, and green shells at the start of the fireworks display. They signal the timing that the uh that the judges do for exactly 10 minutes. But here goes the countdown. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Sky Burst The Firework Company. Come on. Heat. Heat. Daddy, help me. Yeah, it is. Oh my god. Thank you. We’re doing that. Yes. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. It’s not going to be [Applause] [Applause] Let’s go. Next one. Help [Applause] yourself escape me. Run away or hit my mom. [Music] What? Where is that? You know what? You know what you’re getting? [Music] That’s a pleasure. Watch out. Shut [Music] up. [Music] Come here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] All right, that’s two down, one more to go. That was Skyburst, the firework company. I was about to say to you, Andy, a little bit more of a calmer finale, but they almost took a beat and then ended it with that huge gold display there. Yeah, they it was like a false finale, wasn’t it? So, they had us all thinking that was the end of it and then it all kicked off again and we had a massive cheer from the audience there and so much noise, wasn’t there? Um, very loud and very big and big brocade finale at the end of that show. Really, I think Alan Christy would have been very happy with it. There are a few places that didn’t go perfectly. No, we saw a couple of uh fireworks that seemed like they were better placed towards the end maybe accidentally get fired in the mix of some other things. Yeah, we saw um we saw a golden waterfall sequence, didn’t we? Which is absolutely beautiful. We were commenting on how good it is. And we saw one multicolored waterfall coming down on one side. And we were looking for all those um it wasn’t anything wrong with the shell, but we were looking for those patterns, those smiley faces. We saw the heart shells. You saw the jellyfish. Did you see the cat? I think I did. I think it was a bit of a smiley face that looked like it had a big triangular nose, but it’s hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it? The problem with those fireworks is is that they’re often contained in one of those ball shells that you were holding earlier on. So, it’s a round ball and when that’s fired up into the air like a cannonball, it can go in burst in any direction, including so that the pattern is flat and all we see is a flat line. So, I’ve no doubt that those cats were there and and there were probably lots of them knowing Alan Christy, but um yeah. Um you saw them, I didn’t. Yeah, maybe just coming out with the most of them at the probably the wrong angle for us, but I think maybe one made it through. We were looking as well down towards the water line itself for these huge Catherine wheels, which slightly obscured by the smoke, but they were certainly there. Yeah, but it wasn’t exciting. Were they going to get spinning or not? They weren’t moving for probably the first 10 seconds and then they were just building up the thrust and finally they started turning and then they created loads of smoke and we couldn’t see them. Yeah. I mean, so were these the ones? Because for context, when Andy and I were down at the breakwater earlier and we spoke to Alan, this may mean more to car enthusiasts than it did to me, but they used a the idler bearing of a transit van to put the Katherine wheel together, which for all intents and purposes just look like a huge wad of metal. So, they’ve got a van sitting in a warehouse somewhere that they can’t use because they took it apart to make the Catherine. I couldn’t believe they told us that, but yeah. Um the van parts have gone into making those wheels. Well, it was worth it because they got spinning. It’s just unfortunately wind wasn’t on our fa in our favor. If it been blowing out to see, we’ s seen those beautifully. But we did see loads of other beautiful fireworks. Uh European multi-pillar multi-pillar mines um in lots of different patterns. The big silver strobe multi flash. And then we were ready because Allan had told us to be ready for the 8 in multi flash at the end. When that went, our crowd here on Plymouth Ho went crazy. You really feel it on your chest, don’t you? It’s Yeah, it’s the way I don’t know how it is. The vibration carries across the water and then you you feel the impact here. It’s something you really do have to be here to experience it. I know that we’re lucky all here around Plymouth Sound that we’ve got so many different towns and villages dotted around the edges and they can all hear that. And I tell you that 8 in was one of the ones that they all heard at home for sure. Uh we had some beautiful kind of ring shapes. They look like flying sauces. Um they look nice. Um different colored farfala shells. Those are a butterfly. They look a bit like a flower with petals coming outwards. Um we had the gold waterfalls, the crackling crosset shells, pastel crossets, uh your ropeless shells, and the hummus. Do you remember the Hummers? Yes. I had to take my earpiece out so I could try and hear it a little bit better. But I mean what is the difference between the fireworks that are named Hummers and then the ones that are called screamers for example? The Hummers I mean I love a Hummer. Even when I was a child um I can remember standard fireworks Hummers. They had Hummer mind mines and they had Hummer Roman candles and they were just really really good. It’s just a kind of fun sound. It’s sounds like a one of those comic whistles that you hear that people blow sometimes. Um, so yeah, I was looking out for those and one of the things I asked is whether they were proper hummers and actually team three have got hummers as well and they’ve got proper hummers. Um, a fake hummer sort of does more of a whistle. Okay. Rather than that magical humming sound. So do you think maybe we’ll be able to hear a difference between team two and team three with the hummers? I would imagine they’ll all sound the same because those were proper Hummers. We’ve got proper Hummers coming up with team three. Team three are ready to go. Their firing system is armed and uh everything is and we and in fact I’ve just been updated by our man Anthony Green that we are on standby due to a rogue boat that has infiltrated the water cordon and so the water marshals are having to go and escort it away. You may be able to see it out there on the water and they will be getting that out of the safety zone. The King’s Harour Master has withdrawn permission to find a show temporarily until that boat is moved along. Okay, somebody a little bit too keen to get close to the action perhaps tonight. Hopefully it won’t knock on too far. Let’s turn our attention then to the final team that are going to fire tonight. That is BBB Fireworks. They are from East Sussex and they are in a way our reigning champions. They only won the competition 12 months ago in 2024 and they are part of the battle bonfire society which originated back in 1646. Andy. So this is a the firework arm comes from a much larger kind of historical pyrochnics bonfire element here. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I can tell you we’re green again. The police have escorted that vessel out and we’ve been given the clearance again by the harbor master to proceed. Event control happy for the adjudicator to allow the fire the final show to fire. All right. I imagine they’re quite keen to get on with it. So, shall we hear from BBB’s spokesperson and then we’ll have a quick chat before they fire. Hi, my name’s Ollie. I’m the pirateex manager of BBB Fireworks based in Battle in East Sussex. We are the British firework champions from 2024. Tonight you can expect a variety of firework effects from all over the world. The ones in particular would be worth watching is the epic finale at the end where where the sky will light up so bright that hopefully it will dazzle the cameras. Hope you enjoy the show. There we go. Cameras due to be dazzled. Uh do you think they these guys are going to have some of the biggest shells on display tonight? Uh, well, the biggest the maximum size is 8 in. So, they that they’re all all teams have to meet that. I can tell you Ollie and his team are now into the two-minute countdown, so they’re getting very nervous. There’s some things to look out for in this area. It opens in the rhythm of a famous Queen song. Oh, hello. Now, I can think about what that might be. They haven’t told me, but I think I might know what that is. So, listen out for a famous queen song. They’ve got Chinese, Spanish, Italian, and UK products here. They’ve got some product that we saw last year from Illusion Pyrochnics made in the UK. Lightning shells, Niagara shells, whistles, screamers, and Hummers in 3 and 6 in diameter. Italian ghost shells and broc strobe from Spain. And a finale obliterating the sky with noise and special silver brocade crown shells from Sunny Factory in China. 1,086 single shots, 1,400 shells, 2 to 8 in in diameter in eight positions, 15 crew, five tons of equipment, and five and a half and over half a ton of explosives. Okay, it’s going to be big. It’s going to be bold, and it’s going to be loud, I think, is is fairly safe to say. Coming up for the countdown any moment. Here we go. All right. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 BBB fireworks. [Music] Yeah. Heat. [Music] Yeah. [Music] Heat. Heat. That was bad. [Music] Oh my god. [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Almost. Oh no. [Applause] [Applause] Well, each display can have up to 550 50 kg of net explosive mass. That’s right, isn’t it, Andy? And I think it’s fair to say they probably went with almost all of it. I think they went right up to the limit there, didn’t they? Really, really spectacular display. And I think that finale got the biggest response from the audience down here on PLO. It was really colorful. Um, had to say that we saw quite a lot of smoke during this display. And I understand that if you’re over in the barbecue at the moment, it’s all going that way. It’s all going that way at the moment. But there’s nothing we can do to control where the smoke goes. Unfortunately, other times it will go out to sea. But we started off there with the queen song. And Erin, did you spot that Queen song? We will rock you. Yes. Yes. Yes. You’re correct. Sorry, I said no more questions. I know. Yeah, luckily I got that one right so it’s fine. We had some lovely white multi flash shells going off there. And we can see here some pink. Look, there you go. Look at that pink multi the multi flash in the sky in the center. Um really really beautiful uh um shells going off. Uh there are lovely some purple shells and different colors here. This is an interesting show because it had highs and lows. Uh, and there were some points where it was perhaps not as strong as some of the other displays we’ve already seen tonight. And then other areas where it was really strong, like that finale that we just saw that you really really felt hit felt on you. Um, but yeah, I I loved it. There was that very colorful square shape that we saw up in the sky at one point. Uh, did you see the spirals? Red spirals. I saw some spirals. Yeah. Um, rings. um some smiley faces. Um they weren’t see you could you can judge we’ve seen smiley faces throughout the night. You can judge one smiley face against another, can’t you? And uh we weren’t uh we weren’t those smiley faces weren’t quite as good in this one. There’s a bit of a risk putting them in sometimes just because of the way like you said they may appear in the sky. Yeah, I think that if I was designing a show for this champion of champions, I want variety. I want to show the judges that I’ve brought out all the uh the tricks and I’ve used everything that I possibly could. So, that’s why we’re seeing that. Look at that multi flash. And that you really felt, didn’t you? Um huge great big shell and the silver strobe down at the bottom as well. And look at that going up, raising different altitudes going up into the sky there. Really uh very very nice. Um we had a red, white, and blue sequence after this as well after the multi flash. Um, and then, um, then we had some shells with some fairly what I would call simple colors, red, green, blue, and gold. Um, you they’re probably the colors that you see most often in Chinese fireworks. So, bit kind of standard, your standard, pretty standard. Yeah. But they were offset by beautiful things like this where you see lots of different colors. Um, and we saw lots of multilevel. I think our crew really liked this one, didn’t they? I mean, they were lots of like it. Yeah, they were they were making lots of comments. That’s that was fantastic, wasn’t it? Um, yeah, they they really enjoyed that this particular one. And do you remember that bright flash with the loud bang that came in? I looked directly at it and now I I still can’t quite see you properly. It was really dazzling if you were down here in Plymouth, weren’t you? um and a multicolor shell finale that turned into um the big and perhaps most awesome finale of the night that was really silver and bright and full of noise. Well, I wanted to ask about this because we saw gold finales in the previous two teams and it seemed like that’s a bit of a standard fair to go gold, but not the case. This with the multicolored one seeing something a bit different. Do you think that may give them an edge? Well, they went multiolor into silver. Yeah. Didn’t they? So, they replaced the gold with silver and but that was still the kind of hanging effect. It was very classy. It was um it was perhaps one up on the gold in that what you really want is something that hangs there. And I don’t know whether you noticed, but we have that keepout zone for all the craft out in Plymouth Harbor. Yeah. And we needed every inch of it tonight for that finale because there was silver raining down all over the place. Um and uh yeah, it that’s why we had to chase off that boat with the police earlier because we had to we’ve got something like that going off and they knew about it. Well, certainly a fantastic way to end night one and we get to do it all over again tomorrow with three more teams which is absolutely fantastic. Um, we’ll just have a little look at the teams that we’ve got coming up for you tomorrow on the screen here for you. We have Cellstar Fireworks, Fully Fused Fireworks, and First Galaxy Fireworks. They’ll all be looking forward to showing off what they’ve got. It’s quite tricky, isn’t it, when you go from from night one to night two because now these guys all know what’s come before them and what to expect. Having having done it before, do you have a preference with which night to perform on? Oh yeah, absolutely. Hands down. You want to fire the third team on the second night because there’s a psychological advantage. People think that they’re going to be in a good position and they’ve got an advantage there, but you know, we’ve got a really great night of fireworks ahead. I heard a really interesting statistic um earlier that last year’s firework competition brought something like 9.29 29 million pounds worth of publicity to Plymouth. That was reported by Tudor Evans, leader of the council. And you can see why the hotels are full, the restaurants are full, the hoe here, and all along the citadel and right into the barbecue. They didn’t get such a good view tonight, but hopefully tomorrow they have a great view. Um, it’s so much going on. We have three very special shows there. There are people there. Cellstar, remember, are our current reigning champion of champions. So, I think that they will be really out to try and retain that title. That would be the first time it’s been done in competition history. And what an achievement that would be great for their company. So, they’ll be trying really hard. Fully fused, very competent firework display company. First Galaxy Fireworks likewise. Um, the judges have got a really real difficult job on their hands. I wouldn’t like to call it we we saw lots of strengths in lots of different parts of the shows tonight. Um and you know there were there were things that some parts of the audience cheered at more and bits that they they didn’t and in vice versa in different shows. So um but likewise watch Southstar. I don’t know what they’ve got planned but we will know beforehand tomorrow. They almost certainly will want to defend their title. All right. So, still very much all to play for and we get to do it all over again. Before we wrap up for this evening, just a couple of special mentions. I want to give a mention to Paul Grant who unfortunately missed last year’s competition. He’s no longer with us, but his family are here on Plymouth Hoe in his memory here to celebrate him. So, thank you for coming. Thank you as well to our BSL interpreters on the stage here on the Hoe doing their bit, making sure everyone is part of the action. Thanks to the team of course and most importantly thanks to all of you watching at home and in person. We hope to have you again tomorrow. Thank you as well of course to you Andy for all of your expertise and I look forward to hearing all about it tomorrow night. Um night two then will be underway. We’ll be here uh live from 9:00 and we very much look forward to seeing you. Good night. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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Tonight first number 3, second number 1 and third number 2.