Fun day compere: what one does all day, and when to hire one

A fun day compere is the person who holds the microphone for the whole day: opening the gates, calling every arena event, making the safety and lost-child announcements, thanking the sponsors and covering every gap until the last family leaves. I’m Kevin Durham, a professional event host, MC and TV presenter, and the question behind most fun day enquiries is a simple one: do we pay for that, or hand the mic to a volunteer?

In short

• A fun day compere runs the stage and the arena from the first announcement to the last, and is the voice event control uses to reach the crowd.
• A volunteer can do it well on a small, single-area day with a simple programme.
• Hire a professional when there is more than one stage or arena, a crowd in the thousands, sponsors with promised mentions, or nobody free to hold the mic all day.
• Book early. Summer weekends are taken months ahead.

What does a fun day compere do?

A fun day compere runs everything the crowd hears, from the welcome to the goodbye. That means keeping the stage and arena to time, delivering the safety and lost-child messages agreed with event control, and covering every delay so the field never goes quiet.

What to put on the field is covered in my fun day ideas guide. This is about the person holding the microphone. Their day runs roughly like this:

1. Before the gates open. A walk round the site, a sound check, the radio channel, and five minutes with whoever runs event control.
2. Opening. Welcome, what is on and when, where first aid and the lost-children point are.
3. The anchors. A few times through the day, a stage or arena moment that pulls the whole field together.
4. The gaps. A late act, a soggy arena or a missing judge gets covered from the stage.
5. The close. The final draw, the thank-yous and a clear goodbye, so the car park empties steadily.

That last step is a safety job as well as a nice ending. HSE guidance on crowd controls suggests phased departures for larger crowds, including entertainment after the main event, so that everybody does not leave at once.

When is a fun day compere worth paying for, and when is a volunteer enough?

A fun day compere is worth paying for when the day has more than one performance area, a crowd in the thousands, or a programme that will change on the day. A confident volunteer is enough for a small, single-area day with a fixed running order and someone free to do nothing else.

I’d rather be honest about that. Plenty of school fairs and club open days run perfectly well with a parent on the mic.

The last row matters more than it looks. Volunteers are already stretched. The government’s Community and Engagement Survey, updated September 2026, found 18% of people aged 16 and over in England volunteered formally at least once a month in 2025/26. NCVO’s Time Well Spent research found 26% of volunteers felt their volunteering was becoming like paid work in 2022, up from 19% in 2018. Sport England, read November 2026, says half of the sports volunteers it surveyed were at risk of dropping out or burning out.

Asking your busiest volunteer to compere for six hours, on top of everything else, is how you lose them for next year.

Where a volunteer with a microphone stops coping

Three things turn the microphone from a script into a live decision, and they are the three I’ve worked through at family festival events with crowds past 80,000: more than one stage, weather that changes, and a running order that changes on the day.

Picture it. The arena is behind schedule, the dog show judges are on the other side of the field, and a shower is coming. Somebody has to tell a few thousand people what happens next, in words event control has agreed, and still sound as if the day is going well. It usually is. The skill is adapting live without it showing.

Council guidance is clear about why that voice matters. Dover District Council’s event guidance, read November 2026, says live, directive messages work better than pre-recorded ones, that a crowd may respond better to an empathy figure, and that important messages should be repeated. Surrey Heath Borough Council adds that a link into the PA is essential for managing the public, and warns that messages overheard and misheard can cause panic.

A crowd that can walk away is also judging you every minute. At that scale you cannot rely on the microphone to do the work, and you cannot afford a dead moment. More on holding a standing crowd is in my festival stage guide.

What does a fun day compere need from you?

A fun day compere needs the site plan, the running order, the crowd estimate and the name of whoever runs event control, plus the safety, lost-children and wet-weather procedures, sponsor names and how to say them. Send what you have early, then a final version once the running order is locked.

The checklist I’d ask for:

• Date, site and gate times, and a site plan showing the stage, arena, first aid and the lost-children point.
• The running order, with which items can move and which cannot.
• Who runs event control, the radio channel and any code words. The Purple Guide says code words should be kept simple and understood by everyone.
• Your lost-children procedure. Lichfield District Council asks for a staffed point throughout the event, and the NSPCC’s sample missing children procedure, updated July 2025, is a good template.
• Sponsor names, pronunciations and anything promised in their package. Nobody standing in a field has ever asked for a longer list of thank-yous, so I spread them through the day.
• Who supplies the PA and who runs it on the day. I provide the host, not the sound system, so this sits with your supplier. The government’s Can do guide reminds organisers to know how to use hired microphones and PA kit.
• The wet-weather plan, and who makes the call.
• What went wrong last year.

How far ahead should you book a fun day compere?

A fun day compere for a summer weekend is best booked as soon as the date is fixed. Summer for me is a mix of family events and a lot of award ceremonies, and I’m usually booked three to nine months ahead for summer dates.

If you are reading this in the autumn or winter, that is exactly when to ask. My guide to booking ahead covers other event types.

The weather call, by contrast, comes late. The Met Office issues warnings up to seven days ahead, so agree a wet-weather version of the running order months out and confirm the decision in the final week.

What a professional changes on the day

What changes is that nobody on your committee has to stand at the front all day, so the people who built the event get to enjoy it instead of chasing it. I come from television and live entertainment, so I treat the day as a show with a rundown, and a pre-event consultation is standard for me. On the day I keep the energy visibly high from the first announcement and make the people at the back of the field feel spoken to as well as the front row.

Kind words from organisers say it better than I can. After one town day, Karen Penfold wrote: “Thanks Kevin for the fantastic job you did as compere for our annual Love Bedford Day last weekend. Great interaction throughout the day. Just the right amount of conversation amongst music too.” That came from my Google reviews. Most of the credit belongs to the team who built that day.

Tell me about your fun day

If you are a council events team, a housing association, a sports club or a company social committee planning a fun day next summer, I’d like to hear about it. You can see the outdoor side of my work on the festival presenter page and the family side on the family event host page. Everything else I do as an event host is on the homepage.

Email hello@eventhost.info with the date, the site, the crowd you expect and what went wrong last year, and I’ll tell you straight away whether I’m free.