Table talk
Businessmen smart over dressing down
In the days before satellite TV and plastic pot plants in pubs, gentlemen could expect to be thrown out of the better drinking holes if they didn't dress smartly enough.
Now the tables have turned. A friend of Table Talk was due to meet three female friends in Riki Tik's, a cocktail bar in London's Soho - but was turned away by the bouncer, who objected to his brogues, smart jacket and trousers and navy blue overcoat.
Proprietor Cymon Eckel said his bar was trying to be "female friendly". Groups of male office workers wearing suits and ties, he said, tended to be "rude, lewd and loud" and harassed female staff and customers.
The bar's manager Annie Ward confirmed: "We only want people who think about their appearance, men who are hip and happening. Men who come straight from the office wearing a boring suit and tie are wearing a uniform. We don't like uniforms." So there you are, then.
Hearts, flowers and fond memories
It must be February: the Table Talk desk is awash with romantic press releases promoting witty and enterprising ways of getting lovers into restaurants on Valentine's Day.
The Variety Club of Great Britain is re-naming it Golden Heart Day. The Carlton Hotel, Great Yarmouth, is joining in with two dinner dances, on Saturday and Tuesday.
Its chef, Barry Harman, recommends the Golden Heart: "a golden heart of a thousand leaves, embracing a tender chicken breast lovingly poached in fine sherry with asparagus and broccoli, then caressed on a bed of aphrodisiac oyster mushrooms and brought to life with soft green peppercorns…"
For every cover, the hotel is donating £1 a head to the Variety Club of Great Britain.
Stefan Drechsler, German-born general manager of the Copthorne Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne, is inviting couples who were courting between 1939 and 1945 to send him their memories of "love from the front line".
The six best entries will each win dinner for two, and 12 runners-up will win afternoon tea for two. Looks like a good opportunity to declare any family wars over.
Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside
Sponsorship and advertising on the side of Blackpool's trams has been a familiar sight for many years.
The local tourism industry has regularly made use of this historic advertising medium, so there were few turned heads when a tram urging holidaymakers to take a "Welcome Break" began to trundle along the promenade.
Closer scrutiny reveals, however, that it was not another clever initiative from the Lancashire resort's enterprising head of tourism, Barry Morris, but Forte using Blackpool trams to urge passing motorists to visit Welcome Break motorway service areas. M6, here we come…
Winning prizes the American way
Good to see that Robert Grimes, the 36-year-old president and chief executive of Cyntergy, is mixing in exalted circles. Grimes, whose company provides training and support services to computer users in hospitality, has been named US finalist in the Worldcom World Young Business Achiever awards for 1994.
He is one of 15 finalists on a visit to London this week. Yesterday afternoon they went to 10 Downing Street to meet John Major, then on to the Shadow Cabinet room at the Commons for a meeting with Opposition leader Tony Blair.
Today, it's lunch at the Hyatt Carlton Tower, where Prince Philip will present the awards.
There can only be one worldwide winner, but the also-rans must be enjoying it, too.
