Hansom

Hey, Sven baby!

All the stars came out to play last Wednesday for the Wembley stadium topping out ceremony … Tony Blair, David Beckham, Sven-Goran Eriksson … Mike Jeffries. Yes, Atkins’ chairman Jeffries was mixing it with the A list crowd like a Big Brother winner in Stringfellows. And, not to be left out, Multiplex chief executive Noel Henderson got to fulfil all his Mark Lawrenson fantasies by being interviewed by Ray Stubbs. Just a shame that the people that actually built it, Cleveland Bridge, weren’t invited …

Sir Clive talks balls

Last Friday was a busy day for Sir Clive Woodward, erstwhile coach of the England rugby team. Having resigned the previous evening, he gave a fiery press conference at Twickenham, then dashed into central London to speak at the Customer First Awards lunch for housebuilders. The timing added a certain spice to the occasion, but the housebuilders got no more news out of the über-coach than the sports hacks. “All I can say is that the ball will be round,” he said.

Residents riled

It’s a sad day when you can’t even rely on a middle-class residents’ association meeting to be conducted with an air of professionalism. A strong turnout of 40 locals pitched up for this week’s meeting of the Bankside Residents’ Forum to see the latest plans for their corner of Southwark, only to be left disappointed by developer Land Securities’ presentation skills. Instead of a giant screen conjuring up CAD images of the future, the audience was treated to a bloke pointing to a plan drawn on a piece of A3. “I couldn’t make head or tail of it,” said one insider. The developer’s excuse? They were only expecting 15 people.

Ganning crackers

It would appear that Toontown’s daily tabloid The Newcastle Journal is a little off the pace when it comes to the fast moving world of construction. The paper informed its readers on 1 September that John Laing, the company building the Sage Gateshead music centre had “reshaped itself after offloading Laing Homes and its troubled construction arm in 2002”. For the benefit of our north-eastern readers, the music centre is actually being built by John Laing’s “troubled construction arm”, now known as Laing O’Rourke. Still, I’m quite sure Building would struggle to cope with a request to hoy a hamma hower heeya, hinny.

King of comedy

Survivors of last year’s Little Britain sailing bash in Cowes will recall that the Saturday night act ended up on the wrong side of a brutally effective slow hand clap. No wonder they’ve pulled out all the stops for this year’s “gala night”, with “not once, not twice, but three-times winner of Opportunity Knocks” Tom O’Connor providing the laffs. Anyone still in need of entertainment after that can boogie on down to something called the Las Vegas All Stars, before retiring outside for the customary heave into the Solent.

Theatre of the absurd

I understand that the £20m refurb of the Hackney Empire, the theatre where Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel cut their comedy teeth, is to have a much higher fly-tower than was previously the case. Far from being a caprice on the part of Tim Ronalds Architects, the thinking behind this is steeped in the theatre’s history.

It seems that, once in the distant past, the impact of a production of Hamlet was lessened when the curtain could only be lifted high enough to reveal, high on Elsinore’s ramparts, the feet of Hamlet’s father’s ghost.

Gherkin gawping
I see the public will be able to visit London's erotic gherkin for the first time on 18 September as part of the London Open House weekend. Some of the capital's construction sites will also be opened up to allow the public to nose around. So if the steel erectors from Cleveland Bridge want to see how the work on Wembley has progressed in their absence, now's their chance. If you fancy a good snoop too, log on www.londonopenhouse.org (although don't expect anything useful, such as a list of what's "open" - for that you'll have to part with £3.75 for a 64-page guide).