GARY RHODES Star Gazing - Mayfair Times

62
meanderings erik brown
A political party
worth joining
TALKING OF PARTIES, I enjoyed a particularly
eccentric one thrown to say farewell to Mr Blair. More
than 500 Brits named Tony Blair, George Bush or
Gordon Brown received invitations to the Bye Bye Tony
Blair pub crawl on June 27. It started in Downing Street
– where several attendees wore Blair masks – before
moving to The Red Lion in Whitehall on the way to the
House of Commons and the many pubs favoured by
MPs. Tickets were free, but partygoers were invited to
make a donation to The Queen’s Nursing Institute.
Bond Street
jewel for sale
MY OLD CHUMS at the commercial property mag
Property Week reveal that Tiffany’s in Bond Street is up
for sale. If you’re a regular there, however, fear not:
Tiffany is staying put. This is a sale-and-leaseback deal.
The idea is that Tiffany sells the property for £80 million –
through Mayfair agent Harper Dennis Hobbs – and then
leases it back from the new owner. £80 million,
incidentally, is a little less than the rumoured price tag on
Damien Hirst’s next artwork: a diamond-encrusted fetus.
PHOTO: GABOR SCOTT
High office
available to let
BUSINESSMEN AND WOMEN who are already pining for former
PM Tony Blair – and there must be one or two – might like to
know that an office he once used, overlooking the green acres of
St James’s Park, is back on the market.
Executive Offices Group has developed the former Labour
Party HQ at 16 Great Queen Street, SW1, into a series of
elegant, fully-serviced offices. The Labour Party sold the longleasehold
on the building – a couple of doors down from
The Spectator – more than a year ago when the papers were full
of stories about the party’s debt mountain.
Executive Offices – which operates under the Argyll, Paladia
and Corpnet brands and is based in St James’s Square – has
worked its usual magic on a building that had grown, frankly,
quite shabby. Labour’s red rose logo has been replaced by
decent artwork, the clean lines of contemporary office furniture
and the magic of voice over internet telephony. Happily, it has all
been left discreetly unbranded – there’s not a logo to be seen
anywhere, red or otherwise.
So, who are the takers? Executive Offices is, as usual,
discreet – but my guess would be hedge funds and private equity
firms forced out of Mayfair by the shortage of space. It’s just their
sort of thing.
And what fun to think of those companies the trade unions
have branded casino capitalists occupying space so recently
vacated by New Labour.
The last word
THE SCARY TONYS –
MORE FRIGHTENING
THAN DR WHO
MY FAVOURITE and most useful word of the year so far
is a German one: Schlimmbesserung. Literally, it means
“a worse improvement”. How can we Brits have
survived for so long without a word for a phenomenon
so commonplace in public life – especially since we are
the only nation to enjoy schandenfreude about
ourselves? Interesting language German.