DISTILLERS, which under the Guinness enthusiasm for more powerful
marketing, has been pushing Scotch whisky as the
ultra-swank drink of the developed world, has plans for special sales
events of ''limited editions'' of its rarer malts. The Diary hears that
these events have been fully subscribed for the next 10 years, such are
the appetites of the cognoscenti. There will be de luxe drams for those
prepared to pay extraordinary sums.
The company matures the supreme malts in casks until the best bottling
time for each.
I shall not be bursting forth to purchase Royal Lochnagar (not for the
''limited editions'' I understand) even though I know where it can be
purchased for just over #100 a bottle.
Incidentally, a cask of Royal Lochnagar, distilled in a small place
close by Balmoral Castle, is maturing there specifically for Prince
Charles. It is to be delivered to him in the year 2000, when it will be
12 years old, to be auctioned for his favourite charity.
Another cask of it, to be un-bunged in the same year, is more
mysteriously for ''The City of Glasgow'', I'm told. Whether this is to
celebrate the millennium or the conclusion of the Elspeth King tirravee
by then is not known.
Bookies by degree
A DIPLOMA course for bookies? Who would have laid odds on such an
innovation a few years ago?
The trade, of course, has been improving its premises, facilities and
quality of personnel in that time and now William Hill (Scotland) is
submitting 12 of its betting shop managers for a special course which it
has arranged with Napier College, Edinburgh. Actually, if they succeed,
they gain an award that is academically rated as somewhere between a
diploma and a degree.
Each student (a few of them already have university degrees) will
spend about 12 months under the tutelage of staff at Napier. Another six
months will be devoted to providing a form of thesis. Most of the study
will be done at home (a minimum 300 hours of it) while they are still
working but they will be required to undergo 12 days of tutorials in the
college itself.
After scanning the learning package, which they will receive at home
every two or three weeks, they complete an ''assessment module'' and
return it to a tutor there, who marks it and feeds back the result.
Retail management is the vocational name of the game. Part of the
exercise is transforming, in one enormous case study, J. Smith Domestic
Electricals into a bigger outfit called Supascreen.
The course begins in Napier on June 26 when Hill's regional manager,
Liam McGuigan, will give an inaugural talk to the pioneering 12, who
were chosen from a list of 80 applicants.
What odds they all stick it out to the end? Or could there be an
objection lodged by some of the wives of the married ones?
A wing and a prayer
THAT liberal-spending, much-travelled couple, Vera and Gerald
Weisfeld, who in less than 20 years built their empire of low-price
clothing stores, What Everyone Wants, to the point where Amber Day
thought it worthwhile to pay #48m for it last week, came to their
decision as a result of a mishap in an airliner some time ago.
An engine on the plane on which they were travelling exploded shortly
after take-off from Rio de Janeiro. Passengers prayed. The pilot managed
to land it safely. The Weisfelds, both in their 50s, disembarked with
mutual thanksgiving and determination that in their remaining years they
would enjoy life to the full.
Returning home, they later asked Angus Grossart of bankers Noble
Grossart to scout the market for potential buyers of WEW.
Mrs Weisfeld intends to devote more time to her charitable works.
Accounts in shreds?
OOPS. Less careful readers of the prospectus for the recent Rangers'
#8.5m bond issue may have missed the reference on Page 15 to two years'
missing audit papers. Present auditors Grant Thornton, as part of their
accountants' report, point out that previous auditors, Alexander Sloan &
Co., ''were unable to locate the audit working papers for the two years
ended 31st May 1986''.
These particular accounts, covering a period before David Murray
bought control of the club, were qualified because Rangers did not
charge depreciation on certain heritable properties, in accordance with
an accounting rule known as SSAP12. What about these Ibrox losses? one
asks.
The Grant Thornton letter continues: ''It has not been practicable for
us to carry out sufficient retrospective procedures to form a view on
the losses for the two years.'' What can have happened to the Sloan
papers? Surely not the skip or the shredder?
Ian Murgitroyd, the chartered patent agent featured on this page
recently, had an altogether happier encounter with a skip. His library
boasts a complete run of the Trade Marks Journal, running right back to
the first trade mark ever registered in this country, the red Bass
triangle, recorded in 1876 and still in use today.
And how did Murgitroyd come by this valuable resource? A relation was
doing some research in the Mitchell Library and saw staff about to dump
the lot -- a duplicate set from the defunct Stirling commercial library
-- in a skip. Some swift negotiations and a few hundred pounds later,
and the set was his. Anyone been offered some secondhand Rangers audit
papers?
Profit from loss
AMID the national wake, the weeping and gnashing of teeth that
followed Scotland's 1-0 defeat by Costa Rica in the World Cup, two chaps
in Edinburgh were smiling. In a typically jazzy Christmas card last
year, Michael Kelly Associates of Glasgow invited all recipients to
partake of free entry in a competition to become a ''half-millionaire''
-- in Italian lire -- by predicting the correct score in that game. More
than 1000 entries were submitted.
Two executives of Cala Properties shared the prize; in other words,
#125 each. They were Stewart Mackay, MD of the company's Scottish
section, and Robert Miller, its land planning director.
Did they consider they were being unpatriotic when they plumped for
Costa Rica? Robert said: ''I'm an Irishman and, looking at the way
Scotland were playing . . . etc., etc. Anyway, we both thought that
nearly everybody else would be selecting Scotland to win by a
comfortable score and should go for a long shot.''
Property men are demons for making money, even in their spare time.
Designs in a name
''RUMJUMS'', as they are known among the architectural set in
Scotland, have won the contract for the prestigious new factory for
Motorola, the US communications and electronics giant at Easter Inch,
between Bathgate and Livingston. I refer, of course, to Robert Matthew,
Johnson-Marshall & Partners, architects of Edinburgh, the Middle East
and other parts.
Motorola, who will be making the latest portable phones and other
hardware there, are aware of the need, after hard negotiating to secure
permission to build on a good, greenfield site, far removed from East
Kilbride, to get a high-class and aesthetically pleasing architectural
job performed on it.
The commission, I believe, is particularly welcome at this time for
''RUMJUMS'', who in the past have had considerable experience in
hospital and industrial design. The firm has experienced some
difficulties at its Edinburgh headquarters and been compelled to prune
staff.
Bags of passion
SIR GORDON MANZIE has resumed his acquaintanceship with Glasgow, where
he once spent time as a senior civil servant, trying to build up
Scottish industry. He has become a non-executive director of Altnacraig
Shipping, the successful BES company started by Ross Belch, former boss
of Scott Lithgow.
Fairly recently, Sir Gordon retired as chief executive of the
Government's Property Services Agency (PSA). Before that he was regional
director of the Department of Trade and Industry in Scotland until its
functions were taken over by the Scottish Office whereupon he became an
Under-Secretary there. He's well-known and respected in industrial
circles in the west.
Truth to tell, however, he remains an Edinburgh man through and
through. He took a close interest in his old alma mater, the Royal High
School, for many years. Such a dedicated supporter of Scotland's rugby
team is he (regularly he once travelled from Whitehall to attend home
games at Murrayfield) that I suspect he will be one of us getting up in
the dark to watch it on television against New Zealand. After today I
hope he is not liable to appear baggy-eyed at the next Altnacraig board
meeting.
Plane with no cheer
BRITISH Midland seems at present to be making money from the recently
reintroduced charter flights between Glasgow and Pisa in Italy, partly
due, of course, to the World Cup.
Late last Saturday night a contingent of Scottish supporters, jocular
but well-behaved, disembarked at Pisa en route to Genoa and its
precincts. Passengers, mostly holidaymakers and Italian expatriates,
took their seats on the same aircraft for the return journey.
As aperitif time approached, a BM stewardess explained to a few in the
forward section that because of the drouths of the outward-bound Scots
there was no water, ice or lemon and the catering services at Pisa could
not replenish them at that time of night. There were a few other
shortages, too.
An elegant, blonde lady, sitting in the row behind, inquired: ''But
you've got enough fuel, all right?''
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