David Parkin on the latest Arena twist and hunting for celebs

YOU could sense the frustration among those at Leeds City Council last week as they remained silent when news emerged of receivers being appointed to the property portfolio of Jan Fletcher’s Montpellier Estates business.

Following the conclusion of her ill-fated legal action against the council over its plan for the site of the Leeds Arena, a High Court judge ruled that Mrs Fletcher’s Harrogate company should pay the council interim costs of £2m.

Failing to receive payment, the council issued a winding up order against Montpellier Estates which prompted the company’s bank, RBS, to move to appoint receivers to recover the money it is owed.

Advisers claimed at the time that the move would see the council receive not a penny.

That appears to have been a little hasty.

Yesterday, having observed the seven-day wait for the winding up order to be published in the London Gazette, the council finally issued a statement.

Apparently Mrs Fletcher gave an undertaking to pay the council’s costs in the event that her company could not.

Given the failure of Montpellier Estates to pay up, the council was forced to take action against the company to allow it to pursue Mrs Fletcher personally for its costs.

While the interim costs payment owed is £2m, the council’s costs of defending the action were nearer £4m and it is keen to recover as much as possible.

This story has further to run. Jan Fletcher has kept her own counsel since last week’s news broke. She now faces some difficult decisions. I’m told her £1.4m house, between Leeds and Harrogate, is on the line.

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THERE is a new restaurant opening at a hotel in the suburbs of Leeds next week, although the owner prefer to describe said lodgings as the De Vere Village Urban Resort in Headingley.

A breathless press release describes the hullabaloo surrounding the VIP opening of its Italian eaterie called Vinny & Vito.
 
Apparently plenty of local celebrities will be attending and, the invite states: “There will be paparazzi present but we have requested non invasive behaviour.”

That’s good, whatever “non-invasive behaviour is”.

It got me thinking that Leeds has never boasted many real celebs. Perhaps its the lack of a Premiership football team, major film or TV studios and – up until now – no major performance venue.

You only have to pay a visit to the San Carlo restaurants in the city and the Flying Pizza in Roundhay, to see that the photos of famous faces dining at the restaurant have almost all been taken as the celebs emerge from the Manchester venue.

A quick poll the other evening saw very few big names offered up. Other than the Kaiser Chiefs, a few faces from Emmerdale, those quizzed were found wanting.

Any other ideas? Feel free to add them below.

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IT was announced this week that new local TV broadcaster MADE Television is to base its HQ in Leeds, creating 50 jobs.

The company has won the licences for local TV services in Leeds, Cardiff, Newcastle and Bristol.

It remains to be seen whether local TV will be a success or  just a flight of fancy from former culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Jamie Conway, chief executive of MADE Television, welcomed the news, saying “our new channels will act as a mirror to the local zeitgeist, broadcasting an eclectic array of new shows dedicated to the city”.

Zeitgeist? I’m sure it gets used in the Groucho Club all the time, but it is not a word I hear bandied in Yorkshire very often.

In fact the last time I heard it used was in a discussion between several media types including former BBC director general Greg Dyke, at the University of York.

I’m not a big Tweeter, but I did that night, using my 140 characters to say I felt very grown up as I had just been at a dinner whether the word ‘zeitgeist’ had been used.

I said – thinking myself incredibly hilarious – I thought Zeitgeist was a German newspaper.

This illuminating comment received zero reaction on Twitter except I was then followed by an organisation dedicated to promoting the Teutonic langauge called Spreading Germanisms.

Have a good weekend. Or das Wochenende, as they say in Germany.