One week with JOHN GULLIVER - Peter Millican on his Kings Place venture

Published: 22 July, 2010

I WAS met by a man with a quizzical smile – and an open-necked shirt. You could take him as an arty type.

Well, maybe he is, in some ways. But Peter Millican is an entrepreneur who has sneaked into the London property market and opened a new arts centre, all at the same time.

There is a kind of a magic trick about this piece of imaginative entrepreneurship.

And when I met Millican on Thursday evening, in his lair, so to speak, I sensed he was at risk of becoming a celebrity.

I had been invited, along with a coterie of men and women in business or the arts, to a preview of an exciting festival Millican is organising at his new cultural centre, named Kings Place, in King’s Cross.

I had visited this shiny new venue shortly after it opened two years ago – and had been immensely impressed.

Anything that encourages the arts in the capital is to be welcomed, and here was a new arts centre for London – not bad as a legacy, Millican must think.

Before joining Millican I was drawn to a downstairs exhibition  by one of our major photographers, Chris Steele-Perkins.

His pictures, both mono and colour, are a kind of anthology of characters he met on a journey across the country – people many photographers don’t see even though they are all around us.

Later, over soft drinks and canapés, I discovered Millican started out in his twenties with a business degree course at Durham University, and initially went into business as an optometrist, opening up shops in the North East where he grew up.

But, schizophrenically, he has always been smitten by the arts – hence Kings Place, part-leased to the The Guardian, with arts and a restaurant by the canal on the ground floor and large galleries below.

The festival, which starts early September, sweeps across the arts – classical, contemporary and earlier music, jazz with Mike Figgis, a film maker – remember the classic Leaving Las Vegas – who, like Woody Allen, has his own band; folk music with, among others, Peggy Seeger and new painters.

I don’t think Millican regards the arts as less important than the property wing of his development company in the North East.

The evening before I met him he had been to Glyndebourne for Mozart – and he talked about it with a dreamy look.

He splits his week in two – Monday to Wednesday in the North East, and then from Thursday until the weekend in Kings Place.

I left him busy talking up the Festival with other guests.

The arts is probably his first love.

• For more on the festival visit www.kingsplace.co.uk

Olympics going down the Tube

WILL the flood of visitors at the Olympic Games in 2012 be able to get around smoothly on London Underground?
If politicians used the Tubes as often as I do, they’d know the answer. 

And it’s “no”.

Every weekend half the Tube lines aren’t working.

On Friday evening my journey began at Chalk Farm.

But passengers had to use the stairs – the lift wasn’t working.

My journey ended at Euston station – and there was only one “up” escalator was in use – the other was broken.

Ready for 2012?  Don’t make me laugh.

Primrose Hill: the land of peers and politicos

FOR the first time, it seems, Primrose Hill has its own peer!

The woman who helped to run Harriet Harman’s office in the Commons, Anna Mary Healy, was made a life peer by Gordon Brown when he left Downing Street.

Apparently, she has taken the title Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill with which, presumably, she has links.

I gather she is the wife of the thrusting Labour MP Jon Cruddas – he wants to be the party’s chairman – and got married to him in the borough nearly 20 years ago.

Political ambition burns brightly in Primrose Hill, as we know, when you think that two of the contenders for the Labour leadership are both local boys – David and Ed Miliband.

‘Con-Dem’ plans to axe Freedom Pass

SINISTER forces are trailing the idea in the media that the Freedom Pass should be taken away from the oldies.

Denials are trotted out by leading figures in the Con-Dem coalition, but my advice is they should be taken at face value.

I talked this week to the man who really dreamed up the idea of the Freedom Pass – our own literary editor, Illtyd Harrington. 

Illtyd pushed the idea in 1974 when he helped to run the Greater London Council.

His key colleagues, Sir Reginald Goodwin and Evelyn Dennington, hummed and hawed.

So, Illtyd jumped the gun and tipped off two friendly journalists.

Imagine the broad smile on Illtyd’s face as he walked along Tottenham Court Road to see placards of the mass selling Evening News, proclaiming:  “GLC to give OAPs Free Rides”.

With the news broken, public meetings were held in support of the revolutionary idea.

By 1976, the scheme was in operation.

Now, with the airwaves and public print shrieking about the necessity of public spending cuts, the Freedom Pass is at risk.

Are there oldies and young’uns out there prepared to say “No”?