It’s not often you’re turned away at the door to a conference event, let alone when it’s  for something as seemingly dry as a talk on retail property development. 

It’s not often you’re turned away at the door to a conference event, let alone when it’s  for something as seemingly dry as a talk on retail property development. 

But at Retail Week Live last week I had that unexpected displeasure.

The queue vying for the remaining standing room seemed more like a scrum at a rock concert than a business meeting and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tout offering me a ticket from inside his trench coat.

Considering this was one of the key presentations I’d come to see, and it was obviously the place to be, I may have taken one.

My other reason for being there was the interview with high streets Minister Brandon Lewis, and this time I claimed a front row seat 20 minutes early. 

The air seemed so thick with anticipation over this potentially explosive encounter that I half expected to see him bound on stage shadow boxing, in a silk dressing gown, accompanied by the theme from Rocky. But I was to be disappointed.

Even so, Brandon’s performance displayed some fancy footwork around unsubstantiated claims that measures announced in the Chancellor’s autumn statement amounted to a £1bn retailer aid package. 

The fact that this was still slightly less than the figure that had been added to retailers rates bills over the past three years was something I’d hoped to point out during the subsequent Q&A.  But after two brief interactions he was gone. Apparently he was urgently required elsewhere.

However, these frustrations were forgotten when I had an opportunity later to meet with new and older friends from the industry at the evening networking event. 

Having usually only attended on day two, I’d previously not had this pleasure and it more than made up for all the preceding tribulations.

And if nothing else, the day had taught me that when it comes to getting a seat in a popular presentation, or asking awkward questions of elusive Government ministers, as always, it’s the early bird that gets to snag that wriggling worm.

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