On board came a plethora of architects designers decorators and furniture makers including Lord Linley who knocked up
On board came a plethora of architects, designers, decorators and furniture makers including Lord Linley, who knocked up the table for the private dining room.But a club or a restaurant can be in the perfect location, designed and titillated to within an inch of its life, and that still doesn't guarantee a success. I've worked in 12 countries, including Hungary, Israel and Japan, and London is one of the hardest places to work," complains Mr Young Plans were redrawn to include a street-level cigar store. "In a normal place I'd look for a three- year payback; here we're looking more at five years, maybe seven or eight," he says coolly.The property, a dingy suite of former offices, had already been secured London premises, though, are not the easiest to refurbish The eager developer cannot charge ahead willy-nilly. "It turned out that we had to add a retail store at ground level - it was in the planning laws. Mr Young is at the top of the tree - "on our level I can think of maybe three consultants, two in the States and one in Switzerland". With so much money at stake, he cannot afford to be hit and miss.
One of the first papers to hit the drawing board was a financial forecast. "Mr Binhendi called me two years ago and said 'I want to start a world-class club in London. How do I do it and how much is it going to cost?'," recalls Mr Young, a veteran of such inquiries - his former projects include the Sun City complex in South Africa.Apparently restaurant development is an industry in its own right; the US Food Service Consultants Institute has around 6,000 members, all busily styling away in the restaurants of America. Then call in the professionals, from all four corners of the globe; such as New York restaurant developer Andrew Young.
Monte's did not just happen. So if you have the ambition to try and take the creme de la creme of London society by storm, where do you start? With a hefty chunk of finance; Monte's began as a $10m twinkle in the eye of a Mr Mohi-Din Binhendi, director-general of Civil Aviation in Dubai. How is this kind of coup pulled off? The astute entrepreneur does not simply install a well-sprung dance floor, lay in catering supplies of polenta plus a few nebuchadnezzars of Veuve Cliquot, stick up some elegant paintings, and sit back to wait for the beautiful (and monied) people to beat a path to his door. Somehow it sprang forth with its awesomely chic credentials fully fledged. But even before its launch, it had already established itself as the ne plus ultra of places to be seen. Before a flute of champagne had been quaffed at its bar, Monte's was being mentioned in the same breath as Annabel's, the established bastion of elegant London nightlife for the past three decades. If more men are suffering than before, then perhaps they are simply joining the ranks of the oppressed, rather than replacing their longer-suffering wives and sisters on the front-line.. monte's, the new members-only dining and dancing club in London's fashionable Sloane Street, burst onto the scene a mere 10 days ago.
Women continue to predominate in low-paid and part-time jobs. The Demos report contains some other equally interesting statistics. Working women still do twice or three times the amount of cleaning as working men Women still take primary responsibility for childcare. Later this month, an off-shoot of the group - a local men's health project, funded by the Scottish Office - is to be launched, offering aromatherapy, acupuncture and counselling.If this all sounds surprisingly Californian, well, why not? But before we get too carried away with the burgeoning new men's movement, it might be worth remembering what angry white males tend to forget: that feminism has not enabled women to have it all. There are now 30 of them, who have organised cookery and t'ai-chi lessons for themselves and regular hill- walks. "They've got kids to look after, they are depressed, their GPs give them medication, and they become agoraphobic."The men's group - like the women's groups set up in the 1970s - aims to offer mutual support and advice.
Eventually, he began to notice that he was not the only man in the same state of despair: two-thirds of the male population of Drumchapel are unemployed; and the suicide rate among young men has risen "Men are becoming house-husbands," says Riley. But, he says, once these brave pioneers have learnt to express their emotions and become mature masculine men (as opposed to their forefathers, "the abusive and domineering patriarch" or their more recent misguided replacement, "the Sensitive New Age Guy") then they can go out into the wider world and help other, less privileged classes.Only when they get there, they might discover that the proles are already helping themselves. Helen Wilkinson, the co-author of the Demos report, discovered a number of working-class men's groups in the course of her research, including one in Drumchapel, near Glasgow.Tommy Riley, who founded the group there at the end of 1992, lost his job at the local tyre factory 17 years ago, when he was 29. "After the factory closed down, all the good, well-paid jobs in the area disappeared," he says. His wife, a home-help, became the breadwinner, supporting their four children; while he, increasingly depressed at his inability to earn a living, twice tried to kill himself. But unlike Demos he sees this trend as a positive one "because being a breadwinner stopped men from having a full emotional life and being involved with their children".That's all very well, I say, but what about money? How are all those unhappy, unemployed working-class men identified by Demos going to get in touch with their inner feelings when they can't afford to leave the house, let alone attend one of Olivier's "mytho-poetic, multicultural men's events"?It's true, he admits, "that the bulk of the men who come are white, middle- class, 30- to 45-year-olds".