My granny only bought shares in companies whose shops or goods she liked. She would not have invested in Patisserie Valerie. Steve Francis and his new management team will, no doubt, have a long ‘to-do’ list but they could start by cleaning the floors, tables and loos more
It is a close-run thing but the two dirtiest Patisserie Valerie shops I have sat in were Edgware Road and
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When London is in a film I like to identify the location, sometimes risking death by pause button. Perennial producers’ favourites like Lincoln’s Inn and Carlton Gardens (see Netflix’s The Crown) are easy spots but, over Christmas
In The Deadly Affair (1967), James Mason comes home each night to a dark, rackety St George’s Square, Pimlico, and has a punch up close to the Thames in a warehouse that looks like a Third World rubbish tip but is
Twelve years later, in The Long Good Friday (1980), it is the undeveloped docklands, the sweep away from The Savoy, and the fear of parked cars and IRA bombs outside Southwark pubs that get top billing.
Finally, in1986, just before London’s re-rating as a global city for the world’s rich, it is Soho, Albion Riverside on the south side of Battersea Bridge (now opposite beautiful Foster- designed flats) and Highgate that are the stage for the menace and seediness of Hoskins and Caine in MonaLisa.
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Recently requiring a new roof at very short notice, I had urgent need of my mortgage broker. He told me that since 2009 business has been good because so many London professionals increasingly have to draw equity from their homes to fund school fees, care home bills, even cars and holidays. Licking my wounds, as I settled the builder’s bill, I was cheered to work out that even the greats of London real estate sometimes need their mortgage broker on speed dial.
In the Sunday Times of 9 December 2018, it was reported that Blippar, a tech company, was looking to raise £150m in new funding, after posting £34
Candy Ventures, the private equity vehicle of Nick Candy, was reported to be a 49% shareholder–suggesting, on my maths, it had to come up with £73.5m to avoid being diluted. Perhaps anticipating this cash call, inOctober2018, Mr Candy had remortgaged his flat in One Hyde Park for…£80m.
In the end Candy Ventures acquired the whole Blippar business out of administration in January 2019, suggesting the equity from One Hyde Park had come in handy.
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Two of my favourite London moments of the last quarter: (1) heading up Park Lane on the top floor of the bus, after a boys’ Christmas lunch at the Turf Club, listening to Elvis Costello on the headphones (“They call her Natasha but she looks like Elsie / I don’t want to go to Chelsea”) ,and (2) watching the great Frank Warren, in the best camel cashmere coat since Lee Martin’sin GorkyPark (1983), browse in Savile Row with a justified swagger and smile,a few days after his promotion of the epic Tyson Fury fight in LA.
