OK, here we go. I am a beautiful young African princess who tragically lost her entire family in a freak accident involving rabid gazelles that bit their knees off and have selected you at random as a generous benefactor who will help me in accessing my family's US$94 million for a 20% commission, totally risky free, just send me all your bank details, DNA records ... hold on a sec, wrong audience.
tl;dr I reckon we'll need somewhere in the region of £6-700 to put on the best NEC show possible. Now pick yourselves up off the floor and read on.
There are inevitable costs associated with participating in events like these. Public liability insurance for one: £55 from Clarion to cover the event only. Alternatively, we can 'take a flier' and buy a whole year's insurance for £112 (thanks to Mark for following up me tip off ;P). Insurance is an essential.
Now the "optionals" -
Lighting: I think we're all agreed that the orange lighting does the cars no justice. Unfortunately I will not find out until August when the "Exhibitors' Manual" is posted whether power will be available. If it is, it's £80 for the whole weekend. Can anyone loan suitable lights, and/or the ways and means to rig 'em up somehow? If we have no power supply, then said lights will need to be rechargeable - I was wondering about workshop torches? If we have to buy lights then a brief Google means that I'm putting a "finger in the air" figure of £200 on these.
Paul H has his heart set on carpet, with such determination that he has somehow mesmerised someone into being able to provide anthracite cord carpet for £300. This is a lot of money, but incredibly bargainous for 108 m2, and obviously it would be reusable (for comparison, NEC would charge us £900 to "borrow" carpet, which may have drips and spills on it from previous users, and "buy it back" for, well, much less).
It would be easy to say "If everyone chips in £X" - but not everyone may be able to afford that, or want to if they're not participating. So I'm going to take the risk of seeing how goodwill goes

If you are willing to contribute whatever you can afford to putting on a grand show, with a view to some of this being investment in future exhibitions/events (carpet, lighting, full year's PL insurance), please gift donations to bxclubuk(at)gmail.com (replace (a) with @, typed this way to avoid spam bots) - please transfer £ as gifts so we don't have to pay commission. If you don't want to use Paypal, please contact me in confidence at the above e-mail address and we'll sort something out.
Any and all money received will be fully accounted for. If, by some miracle, we end up with more than anticipated we will consult with donors on alternative uses for the benefit of the club.
Finally - Mike H, Vanny - you've both kindly and separately offered expert engineering input for suspension demos, etc, are you both at the National? - can we chat through then? - cheers.
EDIT: updated for power supply info received.