Diary loves an opportunistic press release, and there’s now a strong contender for the best of 2019. When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested by police last week, the folks at flat-share platform Ideal Flatmate wasted no time in calculating the amount of rent he has saved since holing up there almost seven years ago.
Its e-mail points out: “Since June 2012, Julian Assange has managed to not only live rent-free in prime central London, Harrods-adjacent and just minutes walk from Hyde Park, but dodge any increase in living costs associated with renting.”
Leaving aside the small matter that he didn’t really avail himself of those local amenities, Ideal Flatmate calculates that, with the current average rent for a room in Kensington and Chelsea being £1,928 a month, then Assange has saved £148,381. Even though, as it points out: “He may have been forced to pay for the upkeep of his cat.” And the good news for him is that, with no imminent need for him to find his own place, the sum is only getting bigger.
Tom Gatzen, co-founder of Ideal Flatmate, somewhat unsympathetically said that Assange “takes the gold for his commitment to a cost-effective lifestyle in the London rental market”, before cannily adding: “If the Ecuadorian embassy is at a loose end with the now-empty room, we can certainly help them fill it with a suitable tenant who will bring less media attention and contribute to the monthly living costs.”
Caught mapping
If your sense of direction has a habit of letting you down, worry not. Turns out it even happens to the most geospatially minded of us. You would struggle to find someone more au fait with navigation than the man behind Google Maps. And yet Ed Parsons – formerly of Ordnance Survey and a keen cartographer, as one would expect – admitted to EG last week that he regularly gets lost… in Google’s New York HQ. Surely there’s an app for that?
Correction and apology
Diary can only apologise for an unfortunate error last week that was spotted too late to prevent inclusion in the print version of the page. Liam Gallagher’s Pretty Green was not acquired by Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct, but instead by rival chain JD Sports.
It was a case of Diary’s eyes seeing one thing and what passes for its brain registering quite another. Rest assured, we have had a firm word with ourselves, and our head hangs in shame. Sorry to Gallagher, Ashley, JD Sports and anybody else affected by the mistake.
Dibs on Debs
Undaunted, however, we return to Ashley, this time in his role as spurned Debenhams takeover suitor. The retail magnate – who also owns House of Fraser – has lately become a regular Diary fixture, given what appears to be a new-found tendency to take a cheeky jab at the Debenhams board whenever possible. And he certainly knows how to make a diss count. This week, HoF customers were able to receive 20% off selected products if they checked out with a mischievous code: Debs20. Was some masterful trolling behind this, or does the team there believe “House of Debenhams” could still be on the cards?
Only rock’n’ and roll
Diary has climbed the highest mountains, run through the fields and scaled these city walls, but still hasn’t found what it’s looking for. Until now. We give you “ageing rock band” You Too, stars of a promotional video for the third SIOR International European Conference, to be held in Dublin in July 2020.
Paul McDowell, chairman of SIOR’s European chapter, spearheads the group’s “comeback” in the short film, featuring performances from Carter Jonas’s Andrew Smith and Murphy Mulhall’s James Mulhall, as well as a scene-stealing cameo from Carter Jonas’s head of commercial, Scott Harkness, among some “celebrity” guests. Kind of. It’s a bit like This is Spinal Tap, only four minutes long, and it features agents rather than actors.
Unlike the real U2, You Too won’t appear on your phone without asking, but you can watch their story below.
Where there isn’t a will
Here’s a nice cheery e-mail to receive just in time for Easter: “We need to talk about death and how much it costs us.” Do we, though? Can’t we just be very British about the whole thing and talk about the weather instead? That, it seems, is the problem though. According to will service Farewill, 30m of us will die without leaving a will, with getting one sorted being one of the main things on the “to-do list” that we all regularly procrastinate – leaving us (or at least those we leave behind) facing probate fees on top of (presumed) grief.
“Dying is the primary event in our lifetime to incur the most significant financial consequence,” according to Dan Garrett, co-founder and chief executive, but we’re sure he has a much more fun line in chat in person.
