David Parkin on family fortunes, winning at York, eating well and drinking alone

YOU will have hopefully already seen our story today on the 125th anniverary of Yorkshire family business Whitakers Chocolates.

It really is a super business and I was very fortunate to be a guest at a celebration lunch at Coniston Hall Hotel near Gargrave yesterday to celebrate a wonderful milestone.

Friends, family, suppliers, customers, advisers and supporters including Geoffrey Boycott, Welcome to Yorkshire boss Gary Verity and local MP Julian Smith, enjoyed lunch and then heard from 78-year-old John Whitaker, whose grandfather started the business as a simple grocers shop in Crosshills in 1889.

While it was entrepreneurial John who took the business from a bakery into the confectionery business 50-odd years ago, he didn’t want to talk about his time at the helm, more to celebrate the success and innovation of his forebears.

He spoke of the photograph he has of the original shop on the main street of Crosshills where they sold everything – from Vim and pins to corsets and shawls priced at two shillings and 11 pence.

“There were two horses teathered in the street, it looked like Carson City, all that was missing was Wyatt Earp,” he told guests.

He held up the leather bound recipe books of his father and “Dear Auntie Ida” and reminisced about Skipton as a market town 50 years ago.

“If you want to know what Skipton was like 50 or 60 years ago, I suggest you go to Helmsley, they don’t have all the supermarkets there – they have real shops,” he commented wistfully.

John remembered going to see the top man at Midland Bank in York when he was seeking a £50,000 loan to invest in equipment and the expansion of the factory.

Expecting to be dismissed by the pinstriped banker, after lunch over the boardroom table, the banker said: “John, you don’t need £50,000, you need £150,000.”

“With the shake of a hand, that was agreed,” he remembered.

Then he added quickly: “Are you listening, you bankers?”

When his son William, who now runs the business, picked up the microphone to thank the audience, he said: “I’d like to apologise to our bankers and our customers from Tesco and the Co-op.”

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IF you’re thinking of going to the last day of the Dante race meeting at York today, then I hope you’ve already booked your tickets.

It is completely sold out today. And that’s for both tickets to get into the enclosure and all the corporate hospitality as well.

To me, that says two things.

One, is that that the clearest sign yet of the end of recession?

Two, what a great job York Racecourse chief executive William Derby and head of marketing James Brennan have done to achieve this.

They have shrewdly chosen to freeze prices while investing in prize money (it is the first £1m Dante Festival) and the new Northern End development.

Ever the marketeer, James told me: “So encourage readers to book now for the rest of theseason so they don’t miss the advantages their competitors are taking.”

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I’ve worked out where I’m going wrong.

Well, only with one aspect of my life – the rest of my failings and how to remedy them remain a mystery.

I was in a bar last Friday night and apparently an accountant sitting nearby said to his companion: “That’s David Parkin over there. Never go out with him on a Thursday night otherwise you’ll feature in his blog on a Friday morning.”

Now I realise why I’m always struggling for company on a Thursday night.

But then it is a struggle to find it for the rest of the week too.

It can’t be something I wrote can it?

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Perhaps I should avoid going out on a Friday too. I’m the first to criticise people for losing their phones or tipping water all over them on their desks.

Last Friday night I managed to drop my mobile phone into the toilet at a curry house.

So if you have sent me a text or left me a message since then, it is very unlikely I’ve got it.

At last I can finally justify a plea of ignorance when it comes to not returning calls.

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IT is great to see a new independent restaurant thriving.

I paid a visit to La Feria in Harrogate this week. The brainchild of former Marie Curie Cancer Care fundraiser Jez Verity, the Spanish-style restaurant is based on a simple concept – but aren’t all the best places?

It serves cuts of meat and cheese as starters and for mains you order chicken accompanied by salad and chips and a lovely sauce which they serve in Andalucia, where Jez has spent a lot of time over the years.

What you don’t do is compare it to Nandos, otherwise I’m sure you’ll get your marching orders in Spanish.

To be honest, that might have been preferable to the backhanded compliment issued by the waitress.

I told her that it was my first opportunity to eat at La Feria because I had only ever drunk in the restaurant before at the launch event.

“My parents are like that,” she said.