SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
More changes at London Weekend Television. Lombard Banking, with 8 per cent of the equity worth £118,000, must sell now they are a National Westminster Bank subsidiary. They have fallen on a buyer at a reported £1.25 per share for their block but need the consent of Lord Aylestone and the ITA who may not look favourably on this transfer which is believed to be to a public company close to show-business. As London Weekend and all the independent companies are doing well I don't suppose Lonibard will have trouble lining up some one else after first offering their shares to existing shareholders.
The development of their office block on the 1 South Bank is nearing completion and will be a good investment with 65,000 square feet of spare office space for renting, even though a lot has been tailored as studios instead of being erected as a general purpose building, but this happened when the company was Aidan Crawley's fiefdom and planning permission was otherwise difficult to get.
Let's hope the brilliant, talented moneyma ing team of John Freeman and Cyril Bennett prevail on Rupert Murdoch to allow the company to go public early next year as it climbs to high profitability. It is already an interesting situation which should not be difficult to get past the Share and Loan Department of the Stock Exchange, and underwritten, even though the reverse takeover of a property company\ would be my recommendation for capitalizing.
Instant whip
Lord Longford has followed another great liberal, Mr William Ewart Gladstone, on the not always pleasant uncovering of vice. He shouldn't have flinched. He should have followed Mr Gladstone's example by crusading in private. On his return from Denmark our Frank brought back "a stack of dirty books, which bowing to the interests of straight research the Customs Officers did not confiscate."
Lord Longford's self-appointed committee of inquiry and its forty-strong force, including one Gyles Brandreth (is this really his name?), might be thought by some not to be representative of all interests involved. Might Christine Keeler have been able to help? Lord Longford is being troubled by some of his committee members who are being told to attend on holidays or drop out.
The whole caper was financed by a mysterious £7,500 grant from a mysterious 'charitable trust.' Was this a gesture from the Quaker Cadbury family, manufacturer's of Cadbury's Flake — notorious for suggestive TV plugs? Perhaps it was one of the many charities of the kindly Salmon and Gluckstein families who own Joe Lyons, renowned for their mouth-watering Instant Whip.
Get Carter
Mark Bonham Carter, the race relations chief inquisitor, might be described as being not as nice as he looks. He's moved near the village of Ripe in East Sussex, which so far has not received its share of Afro-Asian immigrants. They are unlikely to get as unwelcome a reception as the Bonham Carters, whose house has been daubed with some words which would result in a prosecution from Mr Bonham Carter's organisation if the perpetrator were uncovered.
Spies
A hundred or so Russian spies have been sent packing and not before time. It's odd that in the West wherever the Communist parties flourish openly they are without power. In Britain, where they scarcely exist in an elective sense, their roots have struck deep into the fertile ground of the Civil Service (particularly the Foreign Office), journalism and communications as well as within the Labour party.
Officially secret
Jonathan Aitken's book Officially Secret is duller than it sounds, but has been reviewed in a fervent panegyric by Woodrow Wyatt, who forecasts he will be readopted and rise quickly to high rank in the Conservative party.
First it might be as well if young Aitken cleared himself of the base and unfair charge and querulous rumour that he lied to General Henry Alexander. He might also show that he always intended the £500 he received from the Sunday Telegraph to go to charity.
He will then be able to dismiss the Fleet Street joke that he "behaved like a journalist but not a gentleman."
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