Britain’s first women only members club is set to open its doors in a townhouse at Rathbone Place, Bloomsbury, London on March 8, where facilities include meetings rooms, an exhibition area, wellness area, library and beauty bar. Annual membership is £750, founding members include Kathy Burke, Tara Fitzgerald and Naomi Harris and the founders, business women Anna Jones and Debbie Wosskow, say that the club will provide an environment for over-21’s to socialise, network, debate and work out.

Men can only attend as guests, all the wines served are from all-female vineyards and all the cocktails are named after famous women. These could possibly include the delightful Queen Mary 1of England who sadistically had hundreds of male Protestants murdered by burning at the stake for their religious beliefs in the 1550’s, which earned her the nickname Bloody Mary.

Cheers.

o Three hotel groups have been named as supplying freebies to the UK’s serial acceptor of glad-handing, Westminster Council’s deputy leader Robert Davis, who trousered 514 gifts, meals, tickets for events and overseas trips in a three year period.

Hilton gave him a Christmas present of six bottles of wine, Edwardian hotels gifted him Wimbledon centre court tickets and he enjoyed a Spa trip to Mallorca from Hyatt Hotels.

o Travelodge have apologised for branding a 46 year old father a paedophile when he booked a double room for himself and his 14 year old daughter at the Travelodge, Macclesfield.

Karl Pollard booked the room with his daughter Stephanie after being told by the hotel that it was the only one they had left. He needed it to visit his mother who had just been diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer, and the pair had travelled four hours from south Wales for the purpose. After they had checked in a policewoman knocked at the door to advise him that, following a tip-off from Travelodge hotel staff he was being investigated on suspicion of grooming an underage girl.

On the basis that the underage girl was his daughter Travelodge apologised “for getting it wrong” and refunded his room charge. However Cheshire police commented that they had “done the right thing” by reporting what they believed to be suspicious activity, that “thankfully turned out to be a misunderstanding”.

o Blenheim Palace have apologised after organising a Chinese New Year party that was described as “shambolic”, “a farce” and “embarrassingly awful” by some of the guests.

Reportedly the £25 a head bash suffered long queues at the single food truck. The palace said it was the first time they had run the event and that they had been let down by several food vendors.

A stupid decision by precious souls at the Manchester City Art Gallery to remove its famous Victorian painting of Hylas and the Nymphs so as not to offend those who might be offended by the sight of topless young ladies in an artwork has sensibly been reversed after public outcry.

The 1896 painting, by pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse, shows seven beautiful young water-nymphs, most waist-high in water in which they are trying to entice the handsome and gay Argonaut warrior Hylas to a watery grave in their lily pond, and scupper his place in the search for the golden fleece. As the story goes they succeeded since Hylas, who was sent to fetch water for the Argonaut camp presumably rose to the challenge, was never seen again, and Jason and the rest of the Argonauts sailed on without him.

The work is widely regarded as one of Waterhouse’s finest.

Event show Confex has announced a Future Focus of the London based exhibition to take place in Manchester, July 4-5.

This will be at the Victoria Warehouse, a 1900’s canal-side cotton storage facility located in Old Trafford, west of the city and offering a combined 4,533 square metres of space, including areas for parties and a 20-capacity cinema. There is also a hotel on site with around 30 rooms, many without windows, from £29 a night, room only.

Organisers of events for charities and associations might be interested to hear that the dedicated exhibition for the non-profit sector, CHASE, is being revived after a brief hiatus.

CHASE was founded by organiser Michael Webb, who sadly passed away in June last year (See obit. MICHAEL WEBB, Event Organisers Update, July 2017) Now consultants Hart Square and some others are bringing the show back as a one day presentation at The Brewery, London on Thursday July 5, incorporating the popular free speaker sessions and ending with a garden party.

www.CHASE25.live

In 1954 director and screen-writer Joseph L Mankiewicz followed up his 1950 All About Eve biting satire of Broadway with a biting and bitter-sweet satire of Hollywood, The Barefoot Contessa. The cast for All about Eve included Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm and Marilyn Monroe in an early role and received 14 Academy Award nominations, winning six, including Best Director and Best Writing Screenplay for Mankiewicz and Best Picture for the film. The Barefoot Contessa included Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner in leading roles, and Edmund O’Brien, who picked up an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role. Continue reading →

A trampoline centre in Chester has removed its Tower Jump after a fourth visitor broke her back using it last year.

Dental nurse Lucy Jones, 19, broke a vertebra in her spine after taking the twelve foot jump into a foam pit and needed rods in her back to help the healing process. She was housebound for four months after the accident and is now suing the trampoline centre, Flip Out Chester. On February 1st last year three others broke their backs there after making the jump, one of whom is also suing the centre.

Flip Out are based in Bournemouth, have 20 centres in the UK and promote them for personal and corporate events.

The far-right ultranationalist political group Britain First called itself Patriot Merchandise to secure a meeting room for their 2017 one-day conference last December at Wyboston Lakes in Bedfordshire. (Conference News)

The booking was made at short notice and images on social media showed the Oakley Suite decked with banners carrying the slogan “Taking our country back”.

Management at the venue have donated the fee paid to charity and have stated that they would not have accepted the booking had they realised the nature of it and that the values of their company “conflict in totality” with those of Britain First.

o Five thieves armed with axes raided the jewellery store at the Ritz Hotel, Paris and took items worth £4 million on January 10th. Police very quickly arrived and caught three of the thieves as the other two, accomplices waiting outside to receive the loot, made off in a car and on a motorbike, the motorcyclist dropping the bag of the stolen goods as he pulled away. Police said no-one was hurt.

o A Britannia hotel, the Grand Burstin in Folkestone, Kent has been ordered to pay £12,781 compensation to a widow who had jewellery stolen from her locked bedroom.

Primrose Grainger, 77, woke up to see two thieves in her room taking her valuable rings from her bedside table in July 2013. Britannia Hotels argued in court that she could have avoided the loss by putting her valuables in one of its safe deposit boxes. However the judge at Central London county court heard that there had been a spate of robberies at the hotel and that the thieves had probably found a key to her room in the building. He found that Britannia Hotels could have prevented the theft by upgrading its keycard security.

A claim from Ms Grainger for psychiatric damage was rejected on the grounds that this was “not foreseeable” by the hotel.

o Marriott International Hotels and the Thompson Group have been criticised by environmentalists for continuing to supply and promote “walking with lions” experiences for Marriott guests at the four-star Ranch Protea Hotel, Limpopo.

The human-wildlife interactions are designed to instill a lack of fear of humans into the lions, which are later sold to those organising sick “canned hunts”. Here the lions are transferred to small enclosures where brave hunters pay to shoot the docile animals at close range. The lion’s body parts and bones are then sold to the Chinese medicine industry.