Raw courage on the piste
Vegetarians look away now. The meat fondue feast at mountain bar 360 during PropSki is known for being a debauched affair, but things escalated to new heights [sorry – pun definitely intended] this year. Rather than downing pints, one daring surveyor decided to take things one step further and try his luck necking a whole pint of raw meat. Yes, the raw slivers of beef that fondue fans love were swallowed whole, without cooking. That’s taking carpaccio to a whole new, and considerably less gourmet, level.
The eyes have it
The chief execs of the big agents don’t often make it into newsprint, but JLL supremo Guy Grainger has been rewriting that rule book for the past year or two. From the Daily Telegraph to The Times
and the Daily Mail – not to mention the BBC and ITV appearances cited on his LinkedIn profile – Grainger’s face has been a very public one. It is his latest media appearance, however, that has set tongues wagging. Diary hears that colleagues are fond of quoting his recent interview with London financial daily CityAM back at him. Diary is sure that when they congratulate him on the qualities highlighted by the interviewer including his “impeccable dress sense”, his demeanor reflecting the “epitome of calm” and “his steel blue eyes”, no sarcasm is intended.
Landlord hip-hops to the ring
The award for best real estate-related headline of the week, perhaps even of the year, goes to… the Hartlepool Mail for this little beauty: “Ex-Pools player bids to become boxer, rapper and property tycoon”. Clearly not kept busy enough by “the couple of properties” he has bought with his brother, 21-year-old Callum Hassan has decided to become a professional boxer and release a single he has been working on with a former X Factor contestant to boot. Pretty sensible, really. In a world as cyclical and unpredictable as real estate, it’s always good to have a back-up. Or two.
…stir in a handful of novices
Tony Pidgley’s Berkeley Group is feeling the pinch from a nationwide shortage of willing building apprentices, and so has made an unlikely turn to the UK’s favourite celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, for inspiration. The housebuilder hosted a gaggle of journalists on Tuesday evening at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant in London’s Westland Place, N1, to launch its 930-flat scheme 250 City Road, just a stone’s throw away. Berkeley managing director Piers Clanford lamented to the gathering about how difficult it was to find apprentices. The firm is working with the local authority to offer 61 places to unemployed people throughout the life of the project. Meanwhile, at Fifteen, which runs a social enterprise that trains disadvantaged youngsters in the kitchen, 200 people are beating down the door for a place on its apprenticeship scheme. And now Berkeley wants what they have got. Over to you, Jamie, to make things pukka again in home building.
Benefiting from a Bojo and other mod cons
It’s not easy making properties in an estate agent’s brochure sound different. But letting agent Acorn should be applauded for a description of a property on the Old Kent Road, SE1, that is more light-hearted than most. The information starts off with the standard spiel: “A spacious two-bed, third-floor apartment in a beautiful red-brick Southwark LC development…” But then it changes tack, describing the area as “one of the most talked-about investment pockets of London due to the proposed Bakerloo [Line] extension likely to be announced by our likeable scruffbag mayor of London in the spring”. All offers of £325,000 most welcome…
