At the Labour Party conference last week one of my colleagues had the great good fortune to run into John Prescott. After shaking hands with the great man, he revealed he was a gentleman of the press and requested an interview – something Building has been trying to arrange for the entirety of my 160-year tenure on this magazine. Curiously, the deputy prime minister responded as if my colleague had thrown an egg in his face and stormed off. Taken aback, the hack asked one of his aides if he was always so grumpy. The reply, in its entirety, was: "Is the Pope Catholic?"
Watching paint dry
New homes don't sound like the setting for "an unmissable clash of egos and territorial pride", but RDF Media, the maker of reality television shows Faking It and Wife Swap, thinks they soon will be. The company is looking to buy four identical properties for its latest series, to be called The Block. The idea is to install four couples in the homes and watch as they compete to do them up. So if any of you housebuilders have units at shell stage, with outside space, close to shops and restaurants that you're willing to sell for less than £300,000, why not email joanne.timoney@rdfmedia?
Taking the biscuit
Congratulations to Watkins Gray for scooping a new prize that I have launched: Best Office Biscuits in the Industry. I dropped in for a chat with a few old friends at the architect's London Bridge office last week, and was ecstatic to find that company policy is to ply all visitors with delicious Melting Moments. Having set the standard, the field is now free for QSs, contractors and services firms to challenge for the crown. They'll have to be good, though …
Ooh, can I have mine in pink?
I received a press release last week that conjured up a disturbing image of the roofing profession. The document described a project where roofers from contractor Erisco Bauder dressed in hats complete with facial netting – which I imagine made them look like a gang of ladies on their way to a wedding. Even the press release admits they looked "a little surreal to onlookers". And the reason they were wearing this curious attire? Apparently, tiny Scottish midges intimidated the workers while they were laying a green roof in Oban, Argyll. And I thought roofers were hard …
The gutter press
The proliferation of national awareness days or weeks has reached epidemic proportion with such gems as National Cleavage Day and Sausage Awareness Week. Now the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has teamed up with Drainage Centre to launch National Gutters Day on 28 November, being promoted as a day for homeowners to clean out their gutters. (Memo to self: make sure diary is full for 28 November.)
Den returns to, er, Neighbours
New Constructing Excellence head honcho Dennis Lenard ("DenLen" to his close associates) is, it transpires, something of a fan of that pillar of late 20th-century culture, Neighbours. Being Australian, this is to be expected – but isn't he a touch old for all that flaming galah action? Not at all. "You could call me an ambient fan," he confesses, having wandered past the TV every day when his Neighbours-mad daughter was glued to the box. "You could watch it once every three months and not lose the thread." That meant to be a compliment or a criticism, mate?
Skivers beware …
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