How culturally sensitive of King - or should we say Sheikh - Justin to adapt so readily to the customs of JS's probable new owners, the Qataris! I think we all knew that the area around King's Cross (he's no reason to be, has he?) was something of a desert, but surely no-one was expecting Sainsbury's to fold up its tents Bedouin-style and trudge up the windswept dunes of Grays Inn Road quite so soon. That said, I think those of us present at the sod-turning ceremony in 2001 were expecting Peter Davis's smoked-glass Holborn Coliseum to turn into a mirage fairly quickly. At least we'll now be spared the dank, mildewed smell of the downstairs rooms where Davis and King held their regal audiences. Who knows, perhaps that was meant to be the oasis. In any case, the Sainsbury family seem to have woken up to the fact that their patrimony has been sold down the Al-Doha river. Inscrutable as the Sphinx and almost as old, family lawyer Judith Portrait's pleas that their combined stake shouldn't fall below 25% was too little, too late. Poor Judith, who knows the fraying Lady Veronica Pumsey through the Kingston Chapter of the increasingly looney WI, was positively weeping into her consommé at Pumsey Towers the other evening. Different Values, indeed! At least the £7 million Justin saves on the move will go some way to fund his payoff: almost 25% anyway. As for me, looks like my job is safe till the spring at least. With El Gordo's brilliant election planning in the same state as the pig farmers, John Hutton will simply use his chameleon-like qualities to blend into the flock wallpaper at DBERR and I will be only too happy to continue my diet of high-profile, international, jet-setting, fact-finding junket. The ol' constituency was looking pretty marginal in any case - in more ways than one.
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