Diary is not at all jealous to hear that a billionaire’s daughter from China has broken records to rent a Mayfair mega-mansion made famous (well, quasi-famous) on reality TV. Who would be so churlish as to begrudge a 24-year-old with the world at her feet being able to pay £1.55m a year (plus £3.1m upfront) for the five-bedroom “ambassadorial” townhouse?
According to the K10 Group, which let the £32m Culross House, directly adjacent to Hyde Park and Park Lane, the unnamed heiress jumped at the chance of paying £130,000 a month after being shown the property’s appearance in the Channel 5 show Sally Lindsay’s Poshest Sleepover, hosted by the titular actress of Coronation Street fame. It’s a good job they sent the right tape, or our mystery woman might have tried to buy the Rovers Return.
The deal was apparently sealed in less than 24 hours, as the eager renter was “looking for a London pied-à-terre, providing a base for her visits to London with her boyfriend, housekeeper/cook and personal security team”. Aren’t we all? In addition, “she wanted something new-build in Mayfair or Belgravia, and, due to Covid-19, strongly preferred a house rather than an apartment”. Very shrewd.
Though her identity is kept scrupulously unrevealed, K10 teases that she is from a “VIP family” who made their fortune on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong from property, fashion and IT. Which, for a more investigative journalist than Diary, would surely narrow it down.
Getting a start in the development game
Mayfair, Park Lane… Diary can only imagine our mystery heiress (see above) is a whiz at Monopoly, the game that has introduced so many generations to the joys of real estate (and not speaking to your family for days afterwards).
Now, it seems, maker Hasbro – never slow to spot a gap in the market for a variant edition – is levelling up with a version just for budding HNWs. News emerged this week of Monopoly Builder, which promises the classic game with a “strategy twist” that all comes to life on “Monopoly Island”, floating in the centre of the board.
Players buy properties and collect rent as usual, but also acquire builder’s blocks to develop their island city. And, for all those who have been trapped in games of the original that you fear might just go on forever, this one has a definite ending: when the penthouse is in place. Diary isn’t saying Monopoly Builder will guarantee your children a future as developers, but the rule tweak might just save Christmas.
Picture © Jeff Blackler/REX/Shutterstock
Master of naan?
While a big fan of the local chippy, Diary has been craving top restaurant-quality food in these lockdown times. Luckily for us, clever bricks-and-mortar operators have been busy innovating and creating recipe boxes for menu favourites that can be sent straight to our doorsteps.
Riding to Diary’s rescue were the folks at Dishoom and property PR Aver, who kindly sent us a DIY kit for vegan sausage naan rolls to attempt at home. While there were a good few pots involved – and one unfortunate incident involving a red-hot frying pan, some masala chai spices and a burnt naan – the end result was totally worth it.
Diary still can’t wait to get back out there and try the real deal when venues are back up and running, but in the meantime these kits will definitely keep our tastebuds tickled.
A new leaf
As Simon Silver steps down from his executive directorship at Derwent London, he is already finding new projects to keep himself busy – including one that he hopes will educate and inspire those with an eye for design.
Silver is penning Journeys Into Architecture, a book bringing together a collection of his own essays on some of his favourite buildings around the world – sites as varied as Paris’ Maison de Verre and the Seagram building on New York’s Park Avenue. He aims to give some copies to the British Architectural Library and to share the rest with friends in the industry.
Silver, of course, is much too modest to include any of Derwent’s own buildings in the book. Maybe those will be saved for the follow-up. For more on Silver’s future plans, read the exclusive interview here.
