David Parkin on The Apprentice, the St Leger and a concrete monstrosity

I’M all for celebrating successful new British businesses.

But somewhere along the line the focus seems to have shifted the wrong way.

Take the British Young Business Awards for instance.

They had Business Secretary Vince Cable at the ceremony last month at the upmarket Mayfair Hotel in London.

A host of new start-ups were there and many received awards. And alongside Dr Cable MP & Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, presenting the awards was…Luisa Zissman.

She’s the big haired pouting one (does that narrow it down?) that was runner up in the final of The Apprentice with an over-cooked idea for a baking ingredients business.

It looks like she’s parked any ideas of entrepreneurship and has jumped aboard the media gravy train that so many Apprentice contestants find so attractive.

Is this really the person that is going to inspire those running small enterprises?

Not in my book.

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NEWS that the former Yorkshire Post Newspapers headquarters in Leeds is to be demolished was greeted with disappointment in some quarters this week.

Having spent seven years of my working life there I have a fondness for the newspapers and the fantastic colleagues I worked with, but not the building.

It really is a concrete monstrosity, built at a time when windows must have been deemed an unnecessary luxury for those who worked inside it.

The most exciting part of working in that building was taking visitors down to the giant press hall where they could see that day’s paper rolling off the presses and take a copy, the ink barely dried on the page.

Opened by Prince Charles in 1970, it was once suggested that it may even have gained listed status, given its unique late 1960s architecture.

However English Heritage said the architecture, while striking, was “not innovative and lacks coherence, making it one of John Madin’s less successful designs”.

To be fair, there were a few people working inside the building who lacked coherence at certain times.

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AFTER writing about attending Ladies Day at York Racecourse’s Ebor Festival last month, experienced racegoers suggested a trip to the equivalent day at the St Leger meeting in Doncaster would be an experience.

So, in the interests of journalistic research, I headed to South Yorkshire yesterday to experience the delights of Ladies Day at the St Leger.

And it is an experience. Fortunately I was in the capable hands of Dave Jones and Tom Flannery of Reward Capital.

Dave said he’d once been given the advice that Doncaster was full of “fast women and slow horses”.

And that was certainly the case for me yesterday. Unfortunately I was only a victim of slow horses, I couldn’t catch any of the fast women.

Glancing around the champagne lawn I came to the conclusion that Gillette must have its worst sales ever in Doncaster and tattoos on feet are very en vogue.

I enjoyed the experience and the space for racegoers to mingle while enjoying the racing, live music or just chatting to friends is a bonus.

Have a nice weekend.