In 1994 Thomas Neal’s Yard Shopping Centre in Covent Garden was pretty much completely vacant, save for a restaurant in the basement.

I hired the entire shopping centre for my 23rd birthday party one saturday night.

It cost me £120 for the doormen, but was free as long as we promised to spend £500 behind the bar.

Strangely enough, even I got lucky.

At long last the powers that be have taken decisive action to head of a certain catastrophe.

No I don’t mean the co-ordinated actions of the central banks to provide unlimited dollar liquidity silly, no, Sunderland have sacked Steve Bruce.

Some media pundits (largely former team mates) will say he deserved more time and that the team he assembled in the summer needed time to gel, but any poor season ticket holder who has seen only two home wins in the calendar year, will tell you enough is enough.  Its not as if the the new chairman has been trigger happy (despite being from Texas), in the last two season Sunderland have had two major slumps in form that would have had Abramovich calling for the Spanish archer.

The publicity shy American that owns SAFC is called Ellis Short and he made his fortune as a partner at our friends Lone Star, the major property equity fund managers.

His pragmatic, but ultimately ruthless decision making was no doubt honed turning around defaulting loan portfolios of the kind that desperately need sorting out now.

Not for the first time Morgan has today been described as punchy.

However this was not in respect of an altercation late at a rugby dinner, but in respect of his pulls-no-punches article in Property Week.

We are however quite confident that it is the first time his looks have ever been described as “smouldering.”

One of the deputy editors at PW needs to have a serious word with himself…..

An amusing retail anecdote, not many of these around these days.

Best Buy - the American electronic giant intending to take the UK by storm. They are rolling out their own distinctive store format of a huge blue box with a yellow Best Buy tag on the side. This category killer will apparently transform the way we shop for gadgets.

Well the way they shop (at least this weekend) in Enfield is quite extreme. The riots there have apparently destroyed that Enfield retail park, I am told by someone on site, that it is like a war zone and almost everything from Curry’s has been stolen.

(As a political aside, this is all the proof anyone needs that this weekends riots are wanton violence lead by a desire to steal and destroy rather than a political statement; no one ever delivered a political message or anything of any depth on a retail park!)

Across the car park from the debris that was Curry’s, sits a brand new fully stocked Best Buy, apparently totally untouched. Obviously the locals have not got the message that Best Buy is the place to go for your electronic needs. So a total PR failure to launch its store transpires to be a blessing.

Maybe they aimed for 0% market penetration amongst the criminally minded?

I am a glorified retail agent, Mervyn King is a lauded central banker.

Inflation in the UK is temporary and beyond our control, according to one of us.

However, Sterling has fallen by over 25% against its trade weighted index in the last 3 years, due to the deliberate policy of debasing the pound through low interest rates and QE, in order to boost our export economy.

In the same time the Swiss Franc and the Norwegian Krone have appreciated significantly.

UK inflation >4%, Norwegian 1.1%, Switzerland 0.5%

I am a glorified retail agent, Mervyn King is a lauded central banker.

One of us is economically illiterate?

As I have previously referenced, retail is detail and I can assure you that hours were spent getting the shopping bag design of our ellandi-have-moved flyer meticulously correct.

Unfortunately despite the best efforts of Team Ellandi and numerous designers and account managers at Underscore, we missed the bleedin obvious fact that we have put Morgan’s name twice.

The more pithy responses are as follows:

“Morgan’s rather smart…..he has two numbers!!”

“Sound partnership – Morgan & Morgan!”

“Has there been a takeover and Morgan now does your job as well ?”

“Like the flyer but have you two had an argument ?”

Well they do say there’s no such thing as bad publicity………..

(*With thanks to Stuart Cunliffe)

There is a distinct danger that I may never do another deal again at this rate, but at the risk of further alienating the honourable and esteemed investment agency constituency, here goes….

“Exchange to take place 20 days from receipt of full documentation.”

If we disregard cash deals, hands up everyone who actually believes that complex multi-let assets, requiring some modest level of bank funding, can be closed in little more time than the England rugby team went from being potential world cup winners to a creatine fuelled version of the football team?

Let’s be fair, even back in the days when Peter Cummings was personally tipping wheel barrows of cash into the boots of any fat bloke with a Bentley, there were certain hoops that needed to be jumped through.

However we are now in an age where everyone in a process wants to cover their less well remunerated derrieres and only the clinically insane close for cash assuming they can refi later, so something akin to 30 days followed by simultaneous exchange and completion would seem to be a little realistic, we have tried to suggest.

Alas pragmatism seems to be in short supply with vendors and their advisors, who clearly have NEVER EVER spent more than the regulation four weeks to close a deal, so the HoT say 20 days, but the covering email says it won’t be enforced………

Or so I was always told, another good one is “Retail is detail.”

I’ve got a new one:

“Agents forwarding information when you’re in the middle of a deal without proffering an opinion on the content or more often, I suspect, never even opening the attachment, makes my teeth itch.”

OK it needs a bit work and could be a little more snappy, but I think it sums up what I’ve been thinking recently.  Also to be fair we’re in a couple of very good off market deals, that even Morgan will be delighted to pay over full acquisition fees totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I sometimes have a little smile to myself when an agent one minute is claiming to be single handedly driving the deal through/heroically holding it together/etc., when effectively being little more than an electronic post box.

My name has now been entered into the records as a wanton criminal, a legacy of Mr Blair’s police state.

For the crime of very slowly moving through a red light (far slower than a pedestrian), a fraction before it turns green, on a pedestrian crossing, on a deserted side road, my name has been entered into a some Stazi-esque list in the bowls of New Scotland Yard.  The only danger occurred when the miniature plastic policewoman leapt from behind a BT signal box (yes she really was that small) into my path as a crawled along.  Fortunately I was able to stop in time to prevent her being mashed beneath my low-profile, puncture-resistant “Armadillos”.

Many thanks to my other road warrior acquaintances who shouted support:

“Get a life”, “You must be so proud officer”, etc…..

I have additionally been warned that in the near future REAL policemen or women will be monitoring the area and give out out REAL tickets!  Which in this age of austerity I am sure you will agree is a great use of taxpayers money, although I am sure the plod will appreciate the overtime.

Apparently there is an on the spot £80 fine for abusing a police officer.

In that case saying:

“For f@*ks sake you jumped up little pr!ck, why don’t you p!ss off and do something socially useful, like catch the tw@ts who keyed my car last week, you c@ck?”

Will be money well spent.