Team to head the Highland Show

Little more than a month after this year’s Highland Show, the presidential team who will lead it into the 2018 event has been announced with lawyer Sir Crispin Agnew in charge.

Agnew will preside over the 178th Royal Highland Show next year with his home region of Lothians as the “host” area. His vicepresidents are Sir Robert M Clerk, Charles Dudgeon FRICS, Professor Julie Fitzpatrick and Louise Welsh.

The team serves for one year and represents the area where the Royal Highland Show would have been held had it still been moving around Scotland.

Agnew, an advocate since 1982 and a QC, specialises in rural property and agricultural law, which includes agricultural cases for both landlords and tenants. He was a member of the Scottish Government’s Agricultural Holdings Law Review Group.

Clerk was a land agent and partner at Smiths Gorefrom 1980 to 2003 and is widely experienced in the management of rural properties.

Dudgeon is head of Savills property consultancy’s Edinburgh office and a director of the family farming business at Humbie Farm in West Lothian.

Fitzpatrick is scientific director of Moredun Research Institute and the CEO of the Moredun Foundation while Welsh has worked in the food industry for more than 15 years, most recently in senior management at Morrisons.