The closest he gets to marketing is his big mouth
The closest he gets to marketing is his big mouth.”Later, in a conversation in the corner office of Granada headquarters, Robinson warms to the “us and them” theme without drawing undue attention. The assets – ranging from “trophy” hotels such as Grosvenor House and the luxury George V in Paris to roadside restaurants such as the Happy Eater chain – have been “under-managed”, and shareholders have not received the kind of value they deserve.Compare that light touch with Sir Rocco’s response to the bid: “He [Robinson] has no skills to run a hotels business. Moreover, he is on a “shoot”, that quintessential pastime of the idle rich (even if, like Irish-born Robinson, Sir Rocco comes from less-than-aristocratic origins); meanwhile, Robinson is in the City, taking questions from institutional investors, journalists and financial analysts.Even in its blindside attack on Forte’s poor performance of late, Robinson’s Granada has put its criticisms carefully. I just can’t stand the idea of doing it.”The comment is nicely judged. He has said nothing against his adversary, but has managed all the same to draw a distinct line between them. Sir Rocco is the kind of man who isn’t on the spot when his company’s fortunes are at risk. When told last week that Sir Rocco had been on a pheasant shoot in Yorkshire at the time Granada’s pounds 3.3bn bid was being unveiled in London, he responded: “I get invited on shoots all the time.
Granada’s chief executive is quick to laugh – real belly laughs, the kind you cannot help but join in – but he is mischievous, even devious, too. For he finds himself on the receiving end of what promises to be a very hostile takeover bid from the rentals, television and catering giant.
It is hard to see the affable Gerry Robinson, 47, being in the least bit hostile. A small sign on one of the side entrances reads: “Forte recruitment next door.”
Certainly Sir Rocco Forte, the international hotelier, does not intend to recruit the help of anyone next door at Granada But he may have no choice. Next to Granada headquarters in Golden Square, central London, stands the mighty Regent Palace Hotel, one of 900 properties worldwide run by Britain’s largest hotel operator, Forte. “A dog is not just for Christmas”, he said, “it can taste good at any time of the year.”. If dog-owners disagree with me, they know how to prove it.Otherwise, as the Yuletide season draws on, and children stop to look in petshop windows, we should ponder the words of a Korean friend of mine. (I am not an unreasonable man, so the elderly and infirm would be given the choice of having their dogs fitted with colostomy bags).
All dog-owners should be asked the following question: are you prepared – in perpetuity – to follow behind your dog picking up all its faeces and mopping up all its urine? Or shall I shoot the animal right now in front of you? I am prepared to bet all my meagre earnings from this newspaper that the vast majority of “dog-lovers” faced with this choice would opt for death. Forget winos, how does it come about that demure grannies and Kidderminster Colonels will stand by quite happily and allow their animals to crap just outside other people’s front gates? Do we endure this in deference to their great love?To answer this it is time for another of the Aaronovitch tests, designed to establish the truth of conventional propositions. And she is clearly telling the truth.Is this true, however, for all dog-lovers? I ask for the obvious reason that many of the nation’s dogless are fed up with wading knee-high through excrement and are beginning to go all Jack Straw about it. And Irene Saunders, the grateful mistress of Louise the shih tzu (an appropriate name for a breed of dog) rescued from the hold of a transatlantic jet this week, said that having lost her husband and parents Louise meant “everything” to her. Writing yesterday in this paper Carla Lane (who has written more fine comedies than Dempsey has had hot children) spoke of the “grief-stricken owners” of condemned dogs.
Like smokers who deny the harm their habit does them (“my Uncle Bert smoked a thousand fags a day and lived till he was 103″), dog owners will not believe what dogs can do, until they come home one day to find their toddler’s teeth and two romper- suit poppers on the doormat.This may be the blindness of love. Dempsey was nabbed after a relative took her muzzle off to allow her to be sick on the pavement – the way dog-owners do Dempsey did not deserve to die for that. Better wait until she actually kills someone.But Ms Folderol does not accept that such a thing is possible, “Dempsey would never hurt anyone”, she insists. Then children and adults won’t suffer so much.Such logic is, for some reason, beyond the dog-lobby. Sure, Dianne Folderol (or whatever her name is), owner of the reprieved Dempsey Devil-Dog has undoubtedly been badly treated by the courts.
How much face would I have had left to see me through life’s bourne?The fact is that all dogs bite. And dogs with the strength of steam- hammers in their jaws bite badly Best (you would have thought) not to have them around. But I do sometimes wonder what I would have looked like if Jo, instead of being a rather puny mongrel, had been a pitbull terrier – like the one released from police custody this week. My mother, after she had seen to the dog (who was understandably distressed by the experience), took me to hospital where I was stitched up and sent home.
Despite this early incident I bear dogs no ill-will Nor have I become a child-biter myself.