Britain’s oldest beauty pageant has become the latest victim of the credit crunch.
Miss Great Britain, first staged 64 years ago, was due to be held next month at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.
But organiser Robert de Keyser has called it off, citing the global economic downturn after failing to attract enough wealthy patrons willing to buy table space at the event.
Fashion tycoon Mr de Keyser, 58, insisted last night that he would rearrange the contest later in the year.
But a source claimed it was unlikely that Miss Great Britain would be staged at all in 2009.
According to records at Companies House, the company behind the competition – in which Mr de Keyser’s 24-year-old girlfriend Ashly Rae is a director – made a loss of £53,000 in 2006 and £62,000 in 2007.
The source said: ‘The truth is that it has been canned. It was losing money year after year and it has always been difficult to get sponsors and to sell tables, and obviously it was even harder this year. But it has never made any money really.’
Miss Great Britain was first staged in 1945 in Morecambe, Lancashire. Since 2004, when Mr de Keyser’s company, the Miss Britain Organisation, bought the rights to the title, it has been held in London.
The winner goes on to enter the Miss Universe and Miss Tourism competitions.
Runners-up qualify for the Model of the World, Miss Bikini, Miss Internet, Model of the Universe and Miss Millionaire contests.
During the Seventies and Eighties, the rival Miss UK competition was watched by millions of TV viewers, with the winner going on to represent Britain in the Miss World competition.
Last year, the current Miss Great Britain, Gemma Garrett, 28, from Belfast, polled 113 votes when she stood in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in an effort to ‘get more beautiful women in Parliament’.
But the past five years have seen the competition immersed in controversy.
In 2006, TV presenter and former Miss Great Britain Liz Fuller, joint founder of the competition’s new organising company, was bought out by Mr de Keyser following a bitter rift.
Mr de Keyser claimed Ms Fuller, who won the competition in 1997, had been ‘a nightmare’, adding: ‘I had endless problems with her – she failed to turn up to board meetings and refused to endorse cheques, which meant we couldn’t pay anybody.’
In the same year, winner Danielle Lloyd was stripped of the title after it was revealed that she was dating one of the judges, the former England footballer Teddy Sheringham.
However, should the competition fail to be staged this year, it will not be the first time the country has been without a current Miss Great Britain.
The competition was suspended in 1989 following a fall-off in the numbers of people interested in beauty pageants, only to return seven years later.
Mr de Keyser, whose De Keyser Fashions distributes Victoria Beckham’s jeans range in the UK, admitted that the economic turmoil had been behind his decision to call off the event on February 28 but denied that the competition had been permanently cancelled.
He said: ‘It has just been postponed. Another date will be issued very soon. At the moment I am just looking around for a date in May.
‘It just wasn’t suitable in terms of the credit crunch and selling
