From Poland with love
He watched his iconic MI6 Building being blown up in the James Bond film Skyfall. So it is only fair that Sir Terry Farrell was compensated this week in the run-up to the release of the next 007 instalment, Spectre. And compensated he was – not just with a bottle of Belvedere vodka, but with number 47 of a limited edition batch of just 100 on which the iconic Belvedere Palace design has been replaced with his famous (and now fully reconstructed) MI6 headquarters. London’s masterplanner, who described watching one of his best-known designs being engulfed in a fireball in the last film as “quite fun”, will be all set for Martinis now. Shaken, obvs.
Freudian slip infects e-mail
An e-mail from a property agent revealed a Freudian slip. FTI Consulting, the property relations company for many a big real estate firm, including Helical Bar, HB Reavis and Secure Income REIT to name but a few, was accidentally referred to in an e-mail as STI Consulting. When Estates Gazette pointed out the humorous mistype the unsuspecting offender apologised for having fat fingers. An innocent but witty error to make.
Wrong turn on Twitter
What is Twitter good for if not the odd pithy exchange? After Elandi’s Mark Robinson compared Almacantar’s Marble Arch plans to “a road junction anywhere”, Mike Hussey – aka @Mr_Property_W1 – replied with this short and not so sweet response: “@thanks for the feedback Mark. Perhaps we can draw some inspiration from your portfolio?” Ouch!
Techno watch is number one
This week Diary was whisked up to the top of Battersea Power Station, SW8, for pop-up space innovator Appear Here’s disruptors dinner. If the views and the venison weren’t enough, the ideas and inventors were equally impressive – from the man designing fashion to declutter the urban environment (through pollution indicator buttons to eliminate the need for physical gauges in heavily polluted cities) to Ross Bailey, the 22-year-old host behind the revamp of Old Street Tube station. Conversation flowed from great ideas onto wearable tech. After a showcase of the most up-to-date digital and tech-enabling watches around the table, one guest shouted, perhaps a little too loudly: “Mine even tells me when I have got up to wee in the night.” A useful function indeed.
Who’s that maniac in a Mini?
More from the Battersea Power Station disruptors dinner, where several guests found themselves stranded after the event. While golf buggies had been on hand on arrival to ferry diners to and from the lift, they were nowhere to be seen at 11pm when the site had become a dark and eerie labyrinth. When enough people gathered to ensure a safety-in-numbers expedition to find the exit, the team set off only to be almost mown down on a particularly tight hairpin bend by Structadene chairman David Pearl in a Mini. “Sorry, sorry,” came the disembodied cry. “It is pretty scary out there isn’t it? I didn’t mean to make it worse.” Well, a lift would have been nice…
We need more acronyms, DAMIT!
When is the TMT sector not the TMT sector? When it is… er… DAMIT. Yes that is the new acronym niche London agency Farebrother has coined to better explain the industries formally known as technology, media and telecoms. With non-professional services industries rapidly becoming dominant occupiers in London, the old TMT moniker was just too broad it seems. Can you work out what DAMIT stands for? No? OK we’ll help you out: “design, advertising (and marketing), media, internet, technology and telecoms”. Do you think it will catch on? Or do you have a better one? Let us know via comment@estatesgazette.com.
It’s only the flippin’ Gherkin
Some people will go to extreme lengths to get onto EG’s Diary page. Some throw themselves off cliffs, some down pints of meat. Others dress up as iconic London towers to take part in a pancake race. Don’t they, David Mann? The executive partner at Tuffin Ferraby Taylor was taking part in the Inter Livery Pancake Races, representing the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors. If we were a lesser magazine we might make a Freudian-style joke about the building in question’s shape and the act of flipping a pancake. But we are not.
