Galaxy Fireworks from the Isle Of Man heading to Southport this weekend

Galaxy Fireworks, the company behind the amazing annual Ramsey firework displays, is heading to Southport this weekend for the British Pyromusical Championship.

The championship will see six companies, five from the UK plus Galaxy, compete to put on the best display.

Each company has no more than 16 minutes to put on their show and must pick their music and design their display while remaining within the limit on the weight of explosives that can be used.

Galaxy’s Stu Hamer said that this is the first time that Galaxy, which has been running for 17 years, has competed and it has got him and Steve Martin (not that one), who is based in the UK, very busy, but also very excited to test themselves against companies who have previously won the competition.

He said: ‘We’re against six top UK companies who couple of them are warning before the music’s lockdown, the show design is done. I’ve seen the digitised video and we stand a really good cracking chance.’

However, while we tried to get any hints about what the Southport can expect, Stu was remaining tight lipped, saying only it’s a ‘very closely guarded secret’.

All he would tell us is that the company is very much going to Southport to win.

While the competition is in Southport, Stu said he hoped to be able to share it with fans on the island by uploading the video shortly after display has ended on Saturday evening.

Many of us will have set off fireworks, we’ll have stuck a rocket in the ground of garden and fired it, but while we may find it enjoyable, there is nothing like a proper display, complete with music and if it brings the community together to share in it, then even better.

But there is a lot of planning that goes into this and what planning has gone into the Southport competition.

Stu explained: ‘Music’s the first point, you’ve got to pick your music, so you listen to the radio, you’re listening to music.

‘You’re given a brief by Southport, we had to go over in March to meet South Port County Council and Chris Walker, who is basically the orchestrator of it all, he says “these are the rules”.

‘And he gave us an outline of you know, we’re not allowed to use things like Katy Perry Firework and stuff like that, they’re just old hat, so they’re looking for shows with emotion with you have to get really involved into the music as you designing it and get into the emotion of the song and put the correct fireworks to that bar of the music or that section of the music.

‘So you drive around listening to music and you think in the back your head, right, well we can put these up with that and we can put these here, we can put them there and we can use some single shots here and we can slow it down here. It’s all about using the budget from one minute to another minute.’

While everyone wants fireworks to start big and end big, the middle section, holding people’s attention is just as important and further highlights the monumental task of designing something like a 16 minute firework display.

However, he said that the reaction of the audience at the end of the show is the only way you can ever be sure if what you have put together is good.

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