Your Ad Here!

I was very sad to hear we won't be getting an ice rink this year, but now the edge has dulled on my disappointment, I'm turning my attention to the pressing cause of cash. How is Greenwich Foundation going to continue to make money (assuming that it hasn't put all its current resources into Icelandic banks...) now we're not having Christmas fun any more?

It didn't take long to work it out. Advertising, of course. Which was clearly built into the original design by none other than Sir Christopher Wren himself. There hasn't been much take-up of the purpose-built hoardings so far, but there are huge opportunities up there - just waiting for, say, McDonalds or Carphone Warehouse to carve their ads in the very fabric of the buildings themselves.

Here, for instance:


Or here:

This one, in the best position on the river bank, is sadly already taken:

But this one's almost as good, next door to it - and vacant:

There are dozens of capitols, dotted all around the Old Royal Naval College, just crying out for commercialisation. Pedimentary, my dear Watson...

All I can say is that Greenwich Foundation is clearly far more squeamish than the Cutty Sark Trust...