If, like Diary, you’re of a certain age, you may have spent many a weekday morning watching Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast, a lighter alternative to the news on BBC or ITV. Initially presented by Chris Evans and Gaby Roslin, not to mention puppets Zig and Zag, the show was broadcast from a building formed from three lock-keepers cottages in Bow, Tower Hamlets. Now, if you want to bring back memories of a distinct period of breakfast TV, you can buy that very building.
Listed on Rightmove by BlakeStanley for £5.75m, the six-bedroom house (pictured above in its heyday) is being marketed, of course, with its place in TV history proudly advertised alongside the more practical amenities such as its half-acre garden and swimming pool. The listing has plenty of people reminiscing on social media, although not all have fond recollections. “God, that brings back unhappy memories,” tweeted Pointless host Richard Osman. Osman didn’t elaborate on what made it such a tough time to look back on, although earlier this year he tweeted: “I could tell you a few stories about the money sloshing round ‘Big Breakfast’. Very little of which went to the people working on the show.” We’ll tell BlakeStanley not to expect a viewing from him then.
British Land’s Carter follows Grigg’s Twitter lead
In 2020, if you’re a chief executive but don’t tweet, then are you really a chief executive at all? Simon Carter clearly knows what will be expected from him in terms of social media, and last week the CEO-in-waiting at British Land joined Twitter (@SimonGCarter). He has yet to tweet but has already struck the classic real estate social media look – open collar in the profile picture and a pretty landscape shot of a landmark building, in this case BL’s 100 Liverpool Street.
Carter may well turn to outgoing BL boss Chris Grigg, a prolific tweeter, for tips, so Diary trawled back to see how Grigg introduced himself when he joined the platform in late 2017 and found this: “British Land has been tweeting news and views for a few years now… I’ve decided to take the plunge as well.” Among the replies was one from consultant Antony Slumbers’ @SpaceAsAService account, encouraging Grigg to follow it (it doesn’t look like he did). That’s rule number one of real estate Twitter – Slumbers is never more than a re-tweet away.
It’s all about me
Some dealmakers really do seem to want to hog the limelight when it comes to promoting their transactions. On the one hand we have a statement from housebuilder Inland Homes on 1 October, in which it said it had sold its Centre Square build-to-rent development in High Wycombe to a “well-established” – and unnamed – real estate investment manager for £31.5m, as well as offloading its Buckingham House scheme to another unnamed BTR fund for £21.3m.
Just days later lands a press release from PGIM Real Estate, a – how shall we put this – well-established real estate investment manager, in which it said it had bought Centre Square from an undisclosed buyer and for an undisclosed sum. Days after that, BTR brand Kooky confirmed it had bought Buckingham House in its own press release.
Do the various parties of these deals not co-ordinate on these matters? Well, behind closed doors of course they do, and Diary understands the disjointed announcements are a result of which parties could be mentioned alongside the price tag. But given how much genuine hunting for hidden information journalists must do, it’s strange that in seemingly simple deals like this, it takes so much back and forth to get everyone on the same page.
A classic view on the office
As the debate over the future of the office grows, the language used to discuss it has become more and more predictable. By far the most groan-inducing cliché is the Mark Twain-inspired claim that “reports of the death of the office have been greatly exaggerated” (Twain’s original one-liner was in response to an incorrectly published obituary). So a shout out to Addleshaw Goddard real estate partner Lee Sheldon, whose LinkedIn article this week, “Long live London, long live the office!”, makes an admirable attempt at shaking up the frames of reference.
It’s succinct at just a little over 300 words, but within that space Sheldon manages to paint a picture of the working-from-home trend as “taking lessons from Usain Bolt” and now “firing on all cylinders”, as well as suggesting that Greek philosopher Aristotle could almost have coined his phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” to describe the benefits of a modern office. Oh, and he drops in the etymology of the word office – it’s from the Latin officium, meaning performance of a task. Diary didn’t know that, but does now, so thanks Sheldon. And not a Twain quote in sight.
