In the scrupulously moral maze of UK business, there is a £4bn area of various shades of grey. Never to be confused with bribery, one is referring to the world of corporate hospitality which funds the countless private entertaining terraces, boxes and suites that abound at every stadium and grandstand in the land.
In olden days, you went to watch an event. Now you enjoy an ultimate experience in exclusive surroundings. Always with fine wines, dining and pre- and post-match expert analysis by ex-players and pundits. It does not come cheap. At Twickenham, £900 will buy you lunch and a seat to watch England play New Zealand at rugby. At Murrayfield, there is a package that includes access to your seat through a private tunnel.
Racecourses have been at the game for a long time. Their grandstands are lined with rooms for hire or purchase. A private company has offered packages at 48 different racecourses for over 30 years. You will pay £855 per person to watch the Grand National at Aintree, while a Platinum package at Ayr Racecourse is a mere £190 a head. At the Epsom Derby, 'enjoying the feeling of a private club' will set you back £800 per person.
The people's game of football is no slouch either. In Scotland, the Thornton Suite at Ibrox Stadium charges £5,618 a year for membership. In England, Chelsea ask £600 for fine dining, wining and 'hand-crafted cheese and biscuits' after their forthcoming encounter with relegated Watford on 22 May.
Such jollifications are not confined to sport. For a mere £210 you can dine out before watching a London West End show. Pushing it to £300 plus will get you a hotel room and two tickets to
Phantom of the Opera. For the more refined, £36,000 (I kid you not) makes you a first night patron at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with guaranteed top price seats for every first night of the season.
The extraordinary fact about all these packages is that their cost used to be willingly undertaken by businesses as part of their 'marketing budget'. Now things will be much more efficient, effective and exemplary nowadays, but I have the happiest memories of travelling to Monaco where a client's budget had stretched to sponsoring the Monte Carlo seven-a-side rugby competition. As well as a splendid pre-event dinner at the sumptuous Hotel de Paris, we had an open air reception attended by Prince Rainier and a morning cabin cruiser trip around the sunlit bay. After three fabulous years, the 'budget' found a new home.
Post Covid, marketing budgets are getting tighter. Already, experts are seeing a surge in booking by high net worth individuals rather than companies. Either way, there is still a massive amount of cash sloshing around in 'corporate' hospitality. Oh! One extra thought. Every price quoted above is minus VAT, so since March you can add on a jolly 20%. Ill winds and all that...
David Donald
All this kerfuffle about how Westminster is not fit for purpose does make one look back. I went to the Press Gallery in 1961 and if today's women think they live in a male-dominated environment, it has nothing on what it was like then.
There were three or four women in the Gallery at most and not that many more down on the green benches. The place was built for gentlemen as a gentleman's club and the Press Gallery imitated all the goings on of those elected or there by blood – suits were de rigeur Monday to Thursday, with a sports jacket just permissible on a Friday.
The hours were horrendous as the working day could stretch out to 12 hours at times, and the licensing hours were outrageous, the bars countless, and all sorts of no-go areas limited to MPs and peers existed. Some questionable things did happen – one Speaker was well known as someone no lady should sit next to and did, or so I was told, once chase my secretary down the Commons Committee corridor. She escaped. But I do not remember it as a place suffused with lust, although maybe over the years, as more women arrived, that changed.
It certainly wasn't seen by the public as it is today. What most concerned the women who got there and which the electorate was much amused by is summed up in a song from a 1961 Stanley Baxter revue,
On The Brighter Side, in London's West End. Called
A Plea for the Throne and sung by an ermine clad trio consisting of Betty Marsden, Pip Hinton and Judy Carne lamenting their dire situation which was quite beyond the pale, and asking what use was £3 a day when one could not spend a penny, it posed the question: 'Where in Hades is the Ladies in the Lords?' I reckon later in his career Stanley would have nicked the song from Marsden as the leading new life peeress. Anyway, you can find it on You Tube.
Talking of the great Stanley, he is due to celebrate his 96th birthday on 24 May. They don't make them like him any more. His TV shows aside, he was a wonderful pantomime dame, a West End performer in plays and musicals, appeared in several films, notably
The Fast Lady, and gave the world Parliamo Glasgow – for that alone he deserves immortality.
Bill Russell
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