IT looked like a typical day after a wedding scene in the lobby of the Canal Court Hotel last Sunday, as guests checked out at the reception desk and the top layers of an unusual cake and flowers were carried out to the car. Only this occasion was to celebrate a most amicable end to Michael Hughes’s long union with the Irish Shows Association (ISA), as the Mountbellew man bade an official farewell at its annual general meeting.

1970 was the year Hughes began several terms as secretary of his local show and since then, he’s been a versatile ISA servant at regional and national level. Every role from regional to national chairman (1996-1997), national treasurer and secretary have all been carried out by this affable gentleman.