Life is not easy for my friends in the Tory Party, many of whom can't even finish a simple lunch without having to rush off and depose another leader. Sir Nicholas Winterton was just finishing his lamb at the Construction Products Association's autumn lunch last Wednesday when he was handed an envelope, which he read under the table — before making his apologies and a hasty exit, followed at the trot by Sir George Young.
There was a somewhat Tory flavour to the prize draw, too. Attendees were encouraged to donate banknotes with their name on in aid of CRASH. The first note out of the hat happened to be in euros, which prompted the president to throw it back into the hat in disgust, saying he couldn't read the name on it …
Barbed comments
Hammerson boss John Richards enlivened the latest Movers and Shakers breakfast bunfight at the Four Seasons hotel by sticking a few banderillas in popular bêtes noires. Having skewered John Prescott for pinching the credit for job-creation at Birmingham's Bullring, he turned on everybody's favourite sacrificial animal, Network Rail. Richards revealed that, although his company had redeveloped Moor Street station, it would not open for another two years, thanks to Network Rail's inability to secure funding for signal work outside the station. "So it now only takes between one and seven-and-a-half hours to get to Birmingham." ¡Olé!
Darling, you were so … wet
My culturally sophisticated readers are no doubt familiar with sculptor Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, which towers above the A1 near Gateshead. But I wonder how many of you are aware of Tone's contribution to the streetscape of Peckham – that part of south London made famous by Will Alsop's library, Only Fools and Horses and drive-by shootings. Gormley has come up with "a footprint imprinted upon rippling water", and it is located, appropriately enough, on a Thames Water manhole cover. As the above image shows, it might be just a manhole cover to you, but it's a photo opportunity for a Cabinet minister …
Proof of the pudding
My friends in the industry have been whipped into a frenzy by the 2003 Biscuit Best Practice Awards, and so many will be apoplectic to learn that the postal workers' strikes have prevented me receiving this week's haul of goodies. The only message I received came from Roger Petherbridge, a staffer at Davis Langdon & Everest, who revealed after a recent visit to architect HOK that its biscuits carry their company brand name actually indented into the surface of the biscuit. "How impressive is that?" he asks. Well, Roger: good detail, but my colleagues and I will not be able to judge until HOK sends some in. For all we know, they've just got a pack of stale digestives and a work experience person with a chisel.
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