Just one example of how Sark business proprietors are sprucing up their premises ahead of the tourist season. Pictured are attractive hanging baskets outside Katie Hamon’s Glass Shop in The Avenue. (0960274)

SARK’S celebrations for the Liberation’s 65th anniversary got under way with a revue at the Island Hall by the Sark Theatre Group entitled Granny Alice’s Part in the Downfall of Hitler – subtitled ‘Red, White and Blue and not bloney EU’.

Held on St George’s Day, the cafe area’s tables were decorated with red, white and blue, and patriotic songs were sung during the first course of the evening meal. The show was heralded by the air raid siren and Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast that war had been declared. More than 120 guests were then ushered into the main hall by an ARP warden and a Captain Mainwaring lookalike.

The hall was made to look like an air raid shelter and the guests were served with their second and third courses – a wartime meal, so I’m told, but a good deal more appetising, I should think.

Ration books and identity cards were part of the memorabilia on the tables and throughout the evening there was a wartime family seated on the stage, listening to the wireless.

The three acts of the revue were performed by a cast of no fewer than 27 artists and at least as many others worked behind the scenes on make-up, costumes, music, painting and special effects. I haven’t enough space to mention them all and therefore it would be unfair to name any.

However, I am told that those involved with sound and special effects excelled themselves with the vivid depiction of a bomber crash landing in Sark – as indeed one did on the subsequently named Aeroplane Field.

Sark Theatre Group chairman Wendy Adams was delighted when I spoke to her after the show. She said that everyone involved – both on and off stage – threw themselves wholeheartedly into the production.

‘Everyone got on very well – no ego trips – and it was very nostalgic for many people looking back at those years,’ she said.

‘We even had the Glenn Miller sound to close the show, but just before that we played the recording of Winston Churchill announcing that “our dear Channel Islands” were to be freed.’

Yet another example of Sark at its community-spirited best,I reckon.

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Sark sometimes gets mentioned in publications produced elsewhere – not always favourably, I have to say – but a four-page feature I read recently in the glossy RIB International magazine provided the island with some very welcome publicity, with the front cover describing this small rock as the ‘jewel of the Channel Islands’.

The article tells of two families’ journey in a couple of RIBs from The Solent to Sark in not altogether perfect weather conditions. I won’t go into detail about the trip – suffice to say that they all made it in one piece and stayed while in the island with fellow RIB enthusiast Michael Doyle. The return voyage was far more pleasant and the information in the article suggests that other RIB owners might be tempted to do the journey.

Whenever I read positive things about Sark I invariably hope that Sark Tourism might use such quotes in the information it gives out to visitors, but it never seems to happen.

A recent example is the Martin Clunes television programme on British islands and his assertion that Sark was his favourite. Money can’t buy that sort of publicity, yet our Tourism Committee seems reluctant to use it.

A page at most in the official brochure – possibly under a sort of ‘what people say about us’ heading – would be worth its weight in gold.

Meanwhile, the bluebells and wild garlic are out in all their splendour and business proprietors are making the outside of the premises look at least as attractive as the insides.

• The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.