Despite a desperate plea for help, Totnes Carnival has folded after just three people turned up to its annual meeting.

Chairwoman, Claire Allford, asked fun-loving residents to come forward as volunteers to help run the colourful annual bonanza but aside from herself and her husband Paul, just one other person stepped up.

This meant they could not elect a committee to organise the once popular event.

“Obviously it’s really sad that the carnival has come to an end; people certainly have had enough to say about it over the years but when you ask them to get involved to help improve it they either didn’t want to or couldn’t get involved,” Claire said. “I am really disappointed as I was excited to revamp the carnival.

“I had great plans, I had spoken to various people about being involved and had generated a lot of interest before Covid hit.” The decades old carnival was once a yearly week-long feature in the town’s calendar before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

For the past two years, Totnes went without the carnival and its eye-catching procession, and the previous committee had hoped to get the show back on the road this year.

But sadly it is not to be.

Claire said: “It certainly wouldn’t of been as much of a commitment to be involved on the committee because we are no longer involved in the South Devon circuit, which means we don’t have to travel to all the other towns to take part - we just have our carnival to worry about. “I wanted to concentrate on our carnival by putting on a good programme of events and also to change the actual procession itself to a walking only procession only, as in these times of climate emergency it seemed silly to have massive floats driving slowly down through our lovely town.

“I also thought it would have hopefully encouraged more people to become involved without the expense of creating floats and insurance.”

Despite failed attempts to keep the procession afloat, Claire still hopes the town can enjoy the traditional and popular odd object competition this year and into the future, raising cash for different charities rather than for the carnival.

However, she has not lost hope that the carnival can be revived and urges anyone interested in helping to revitalise it to email her at [email protected]