Squirrel - Show House magazine

A cut above the rest

A full tribute has been to Alan Cherry, the founder of Countryside Properties, elsewhere in this magazine, but, to give us a chuckle at this very sad time and to remind ourselves how Alan was game for a laugh when it came to promoting his products, we reproduce this picture of Alan, taking at New Broughton, Salford. Which is shorter? The grass, or the skirt?

Stood up

There was me all trussed up in my suit; shoelaces ironed to meet Berkeley Group bosses Tony Pidgley and Rob Perrins for a huge rump of steak in The Rib Room at the Carlton Tower hotel in Knightsbridge. Suddenly a call from Cobham HQ. A big deal going down, I thought. The boys are delayed. I’ll have to help myself to several vodka martini aperitifs and await their arrival. Not the case at all. Pidgley was very apologetic, but Perrins had gone down with flu, so could we reschedule? Flu? Berkeley? I thought Are they going soft? Next thing you know they’ll be getting into the office after 6am.

‘Answer the question Minister!’

Now I get invited to many industry conferences each year; most of which, although I am sure very worthy and useful, my eyes tend to glaze over at. However I like the look of the HBF Policy Conference General Election Special. It is not so much the prospect of housing minister John Healey, shadow housing minister Grant ‘can I tweet during the conference?’ Shapps and Sarah Teather of the Liberal Democrats locking horns on the critical housing issues and what the various parties have planned. No my interest is in watching Stewart Baseley, HBF executive chairman, chairing the Question Time debate. Now Basher is a man of impeccable manners and character, but I hope he takes to the role with Paxman-esque relish and gives any obfuscators among the panel a bloody nose, which considering Baseley is a man of Harlequins, would be very apt. Make them squirm Basher. The conference is in London on March 10.

Ben Wood alien force

Some very lucky housebuilders from among the gold winners at the last What House? Awards learnt all sort of digital nuggets at the Google masterclass event (see pp65-67). The boys from Google made very clear, engaging presentations, not blinding us with geeky technology. Ben Wood, head of property at Google, at one point, referring to some wondrous web tool, mistakenly called it an Omnitrix, before correcting himself. Omnitrix, as every father of little boys knows, is the magic watch of TV character Ben 10, which allows him to transform into various alien forms to fight the bad guys. Google may be a Humongousaur taking over the world, but it is gratifying to know the search engine giant is actually made up of normal human beings with kids.

Value added by Cheryl

TV property expert Phil Spencer’s book is out in April, published by Vermilion, and it was written with the help and scribbling expertise of our very own Cheryl Markosky. The book is called Adding Value to Your Home. Now as ghost writer for many sportsmen over the years, including South African Rugby World Cup winning captain Francois Pienaar - currently being played by Matt Damon in the film Invictus - I know it is sometimes difficult to subjugate your style to that of the named author. So I do hope the book has a fair smattering of Cheryl’s great sense of humour, not to mention awful puns. I doubt any sexual innuendo got past the editor, but you never know. Incidentally Phil Spencer, currently starring in Channel 4’s Phil Down Under, looking at the Australian housing market, is only the second most famous, good-looking, charismatic property expert with a lovely wife from Melbourne.

Cold dragons not discrete

I missed this when it aired about 17 months ago, but just seen the episode of BBC’s Dragons Den on YouTube, where Martin Wadsworth of DiscreteHeat and the man behind the innovative and eco-friendly central heating system ThermaSkirt, took on Dragon fire with fire. Martin put Duncan Bannatyne in his place, firmly and funnily, with Bannatyne dismissing ThermaSkirt as “not a business proposition.” Martin wanted £150,000 for 10 percent of the company, but all the Dragons declared themselves ‘out’. The warmest to investing was James Caan, who later visited Wadsworth’s Atherton factory in Manchester to find business booming and Caan regretting that this was definitely “the one that got away.’ Housebuilders, far smarter than Bannatyne, are happy to invest in the product and more than 6,500 systems have already been installed in the UK.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Property UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.