The Chairing tradition started in 1883 with the presentation of the Chair.  It is still used for the formal part of the Chairing but the great night time 'booze cruise' when the Chair Party carried round the Winner to every Club House in recent years has resulted in three accidents damaging the Chair, the last time so seriously that the culprits were obliged not only to pay the expensive repair costs but also to make an exact replica of the Chair (its lighter colour gives it away)  which is used for the 'booze cruise'.  One famous Winner, Andy Tucker, now sadly dead, was a teetotaller and the imagination can visualise the sensation of being stone cold sober borne aloft by a drunken mob.  Hardly surprising there had been damage, yet the old Chair had survived well over a century before this started to happen.