THIS IS GOING TO UPSET LOTS of you, so apologies in advance.

But, I don’t really like the Boat Show. It’s toe-curlingly dull. I mean, there’s only so much sail glue and anti-fouling paint I can stomach.

For every gleaming gin palace, there’s 50 pitches trying to flog flares, batteries, wind-cheaters or galvanised winch handles.

Yawn.

There’s not enough Pro-Plus in the world.

Saying this is tantamount to Southampton heresy, I know.

Especially now when we should be celebrating the deal to secure the site and hence the show for another decade of determined dinghy dealing (see page 3).

It’s great that it happens here rather than Pompey, as was long feared and now looks a thankfully remote possibility. This is especially true if you happen to be a hotelier and there’s no denying it’s a great marketplace for the region’s hardpressed marine economy.

But does it really bring an avalanche of cash to Southampton?

Does it really drive the city economy?

Would we miss it hugely if it went?

I’m not so sure.

At up to £23 a ticket, it’s out of reach for many families here and most of its visitors park on the edge of town, are bussed direct to the site and straight back out again after a day spent gazing at gunwhales and the like.

It’s a sad fact that most of the 122,000 visitors it attracts see, and more importantly spend, nothing outside its gates.

Is there another city that fails so spectacularly to capitalise on such ripe potential?

For all that the show happens here, it takes place within a chain-link bubble.

Cocooned behind ugly fencing, for most residents hefty traffic jams are the only evidence of its existence.

It’s such a missed opportunity. A woeful failure to cash in on one of the few truly premier events left in the calendar since we lost the sailing events and the balloon and flower festival, among others.

I’d like to see the show flood over its boundaries, sail up Western Esplanade and drop anchor in the city centre.

Why not stage eye-catching events and attractions in Above Bar among the glittering hulls of the millionaires’ floating playthings that are the event’s main attraction. Turn it into the south coast’s answer to the Edinburgh Festival, a similar citywide jamboree.

Show this tide of visitors something of Southampton and give the rest of us a chance to tap into this rich vein of business.

Long torn between being a trade show or family day out, we should plump for fun over the fishfinders and the fenders and turn the boat show into a huge celebration of the sea.