My first visit to the IOM was to the 1985 MGP to spanner for someone, I continued every year from then on at the MGP but didn't visit the TT until another lad I was spannering for moved up from the MGP to the TT some 10 years later in 1995.

I must admit after all the excited anticipation I found my first TT in 1995 to be very underwhelming, it was just another MGP with a sprinkling of 'stars' and that continued to be the case for a number of years, it was a shadow of what I had seen on the old footage from the 60's and 70's

Senior race day in particular was a huge anti-climax, arriving in the morning to put the bike through scrutineering to find the paddock half empty, and the remaining teams with awnings down and trucks turned to face the gate for a quick getaway after the race, it really was a case of 'will the last senior finisher please close the gates to the park'

I just couldn't understand at the time how it had been allowed to get to this, and why something wasn't being done about it, my first question back in 1995 was where are the TT crews? by then we had many sky channels popping up such as 'men and motors' and many others, but none seemed to be interested or even aware of the TT.

Now I've been as critical as many others about the regime that appeared over the next 10 years to 'run the event' but to be honest it desperately needed a makeover, what needed doing was easy to see, and it wasn't going to be particularly hard to do, now whether it needed an entire and expensive department to achieve these things has been the subject of many a discussion over the years, and is not one for this thread, but the fact is the TT did need someone to get a hold of it and take it forward before it slid into oblivion, and they do appear to have achieved that.

It will need to continue evolving, it has to, but it's future now looks a lot healthier than it did back in 1995, it will have more challenges ahead, not least the variable climate versus ever increasing speeds and power outputs of the bikes, but lets hope it can be made to work for a good while into the future.