Richard Upton is a creative entrepreneur, a visionary, a lover of art, architecture, sculpture, people, history and community. He is passionate about the ‘quality of place’ no matter whom or what the place is for. He is from humble beginnings in Stepney, East London. “There wasn’t a lot of money at home but there was love. So I’ve always been entrepreneurial out of necessity and adversity,” he says.

Craig Mason almost ‘broke the internet’ with his fake bamboo and he gave the dogs at Battersea a pop-art inspired room that was fit for a King Charles Spaniel, but it was his pub in Edinburgh that had Interior Design Masters on BBC1 sending him back to us in Hastings. Most definitely their loss, our gain I say!

Deep-rooted in traditional 18th-century celebrations to ring in the beginning of summer, Hastings’ Jack in the Green is much like any other folk festival held in the UK, of which there are many, and yet so often people appear confused, bemused, and stare at me wide-eyed and agog when I explain a typical May bank holiday weekend in our fair town.