WHAT DOES BESPOKE MEAN? CAN I REALLY REQUEST ANYTHING I WANT?

Well, within reason, yes!

We could argue that all of our events are bespoke to a certain degree, given that we tailor each and every one to the needs of our clients, even if we are using an ‘off the shelf’ activity.  If not fully bespoke, each event is certainly personalised as we know from years of experience that one size definitely does not fit all.   But where do we cross the line from personalised to fully bespoke?

Bespoke Events

To be truly bespoke, well, that’s different. Murder mystery plots can be personalised with company information and names for example, to add that extra special touch.  But what if you want a plot that no-one has ever seen before? Or a crime specific to you or your team, or maybe not even a murder at all?  The answer is, that we can write a scenario for pretty much every occasion to create a truly unique experience for you.  Our resident writer and chief Dead Herring Helen’s motto is that any idea (within the law!!) can be turned into an event with enough imagination and organisation (and a brilliant team of actors to bring it all to life).

We’d love to share just three such events we’ve either had requested or have created and performed for clients over the years.

The ‘no murder’ Murder

This client was looking for a mystery with a twist to integrate neatly into their two day conference based around the all important theme of customer service.  They didn’t want a murder to be the focus, but instead requested an intense challenge for their delegates to allow them to solve a tricky problem, intricately linked with their learning and development goals.  Helen came up with a hotel based scenario played out by customer service characters who displayed varying degrees of efficiency (from bad to awful!) to challenge the delegates, which went down a storm.

Mountainous Murder

This client came to us following a request from their client, a global pharmaceutical company who were launching a new product and liked the idea of an event with a mystery element for their employees to take part in to celebrate the launch.  This time around Helen worked closely with them and the initial ideas and storyboard they had created for the client, and developed the idea into a full mystery script. This particular story involved a race to the top of a mountain, mistaken identity and stolen treasure!

Disney Themed Stag Night

Lastly, and for a bit of light relief, Helen is currently working on a fully bespoke script for a groom who is Disney mad, and who hosts his own YouTube channel dedicated to the famous mouse himself.  She can’t give too much away, of course, but following detailed discussions with the best man, the evening will  involve the ‘Annual Glass Slipper Award Ceremony’ and a group of fans hell bent on the prize who will stop at nothing to win…

How does it happen?

Behind all of this of course is the ability to come up with the ideas, and more crucially, get them down on paper make the idea a reality.  Crafting the script is key; if that is worked out perfectly then everything else falls into place.  This has always been Helen’s domain but recently she’s spent even more time writing and polishing up her skills.  In the last two years she has:

Written a true crime book called ‘Amanda Knox: Crime, Trial, Release and Controversy’ which is currently in production with Pen & Sword Books

Penned an award winning one-act play which toured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is now published by Lazy Bee Scripts

Her current projects include an adaptation of a classic true unsolved crime for the stage, requests from a publisher to write a ‘how to’ book on creating murder mysteries, and lastly, plans are afoot to write her first crime novel.

So, if you are looking for a truly bespoke event you can be sure your ideas are in safe hands, and yes, you can request anything you want!