I have a confession to make and an apology to offer to the manager of what used to be, I think, the Odeon cinema in Harlow.
A post-war new town north of London in the county of Essex, Harlow was - and, perhaps, still is - known for two things: the college that hosted the courses run by the UK's National Council for the Training of Journalists, and a district called Matching Tye, to the sign for which we trainee hacks never tired of adding "and handkerchief".
Well, we had to make our own entertainment in those days. In order to feed my expensive marker-pen habit, I took an evening job at the local cinema, where I learnt two things: that even the best film (and certainly the worst) loses its sheen after multiple viewings - and, word for word, every foul line that poured from the mouth of the possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist. In 1973, at least, I was a big hit at parties.
One of my many stimulating tasks in the world of movies was to climb the ladder at the end of a film's run, clutching the letters that would spell out the title of the feature that would play next and, on my last day on the job, before disappearing into the night with my final pay packet, I gave way to the inevitable temptation. Let's just say that The Day of the Jack Russell played badly in Harlow.
I have rarely been to the cinema since then - not so much for fear of assassination by sinister agents acting on behalf of Eurosceptic thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, but because I find nothing more irritating than watching a film in the company of a roomful of noisy, inconsiderate strangers. Nothing, that is, until I was tempted back to the big screen this week to watch Wall Street: Monkey Never Sleeps. Or maybe it was Money Never Sleeps. Frankly, it was hard to hear much of anything Michael Douglas or any of the rest of the cast said.
Don't get me wrong. No doubt Reel Entertainment's six-screen "premier boutique cinema" complex at Dubai's Marina Mall does offer a "differential lifestyle experience", as Emaar Retail claims, somewhat enigmatically, but what it doesn't offer is a suitable environment for watching films. With half the audience apparently unable to tell the time of day, wandering in in dribs and drabs up to 30 minutes after the start of the film, and the constant stream of uniformed servers scurrying back and forth delivering food and drink in rustling paper bags to grumbling and muttering punters, swaddled in blankets and slumped on pillows in the absurdly comfortable reclining chairs, this was more like feeding time at a home for confused old folk than a cinema.
Did I learn anything about buying and selling shares, as I had hoped? No. Suffice to say you would learn more about the mechanics of stock trading by reading this column than by watching this dull, cartoonish film that manages to make even Michael Douglas's hair appear uninteresting. What I did learn, however, from one of the tedious and formulaic publicity guest appearances made by one of the film's stars, Shia LaBeouf, is that corruption in the real world of share trading is as alive and well today as when Gordon Gekko first pronounced greed as good back in 1987.
Appearing on the ABC talk-show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, LaBeouf, sometime star of the Transformers films, told the host he had prepared for his part opposite Douglas as trader Jake Moore by training as a trader with a group of high-rolling Wall Street types. "If you're ever going to invest, and I've always kind of wanted to," he said, "this was the time to do it. So I put US$20,000 [Dh73,460] in and that $20,000 turned into $489,000."
Really? A gain of more than 2,200 per cent? This boy's wasted in movies. But it got better. "Four of the guys I was training with," he added, casually, "got arrested and are inside now for insider trading." Thank goodness that no-one at the US Securities and Exchange Commission watches the Jimmy Kimmel show, otherwise LaBeouf might have found himself getting some insider action of an entirely unwelcome sort (which would have been a nice twist for a film that begins with Gekko's release from an eight-year stretch for the same offence allegedly committed by his co-star's real-life mentors).
Incarceration for illegal profiteering is not, of course, a fate awaiting anyone who takes their tips from this columnist, who must now reveal that the value of his portfolio has slumped to a low point not seen since its fortunes were boosted in his absence during the summer by picks selected by a colleague's toy monkey. How proud I was when my original fictional stake of £15,000 (Dh87,620) grew past the £16,000 mark, and then upward and onward to more than £16,400. Ah, happy days. Now I am back down at barely over £16,000, thanks in part to my decision to wed one quarter of my fictional fortune to the fortunes of insurance giant Aviva - and, in another part, to my ability to count to seven.
If this is financial literacy week in Personal Finance, welcome to the refuge that is financial illiteracy corner. Bought at 424 pence each, my 936 Aviva shares are now down 8 per cent to 392p. Last week, I decided to make a major effort to use the tools at my disposal on the Share Centre trading platform and set an automatic stop-loss to prevent just such an occurrence. Brilliant, yes? Unfortunately, I set the stop-loss function to expire in six days, not seven and, naturally, it was on the seventh day that the price fell below my predetermined minimum.
In the cutthroat world of day trading, if you snooze you most definitely lose. Monkey may never sleep; sadly, I do.
jgornall@thenational.ae
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo 4-cyl
Transmission: eight-speed auto
Power: 190bhp
Torque: 300Nm
Price: Dh169,900
On sale: now
THE SPECS
Cadillac XT6 2020 Premium Luxury
Engine: 3.6L V-6
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 310hp
Torque: 367Nm
Price: Dh280,000
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
Quick%20facts
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BMW M5 specs
Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V-8 petrol enging with additional electric motor
Power: 727hp
Torque: 1,000Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 10.6L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh650,000
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Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
Squad
Ali Kasheif, Salim Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Khalfan Mubarak, Ali Mabkhout, Omar Abdulrahman, Mohammed Al Attas, Abdullah Ramadan, Zayed Al Ameri (Al Jazira), Mohammed Al Shamsi, Hamdan Al Kamali, Mohammed Barghash, Khalil Al Hammadi (Al Wahda), Khalid Essa, Mohammed Shaker, Ahmed Barman, Bandar Al Ahbabi (Al Ain), Al Hassan Saleh, Majid Suroor (Sharjah) Walid Abbas, Ahmed Khalil (Shabab Al Ahli), Tariq Ahmed, Jasim Yaqoub (Al Nasr), Ali Saleh, Ali Salmeen (Al Wasl), Hassan Al Muharami (Baniyas)
Expert input
If you had all the money in the world, what’s the one sneaker you would buy or create?
“There are a few shoes that have ‘grail’ status for me. But the one I have always wanted is the Nike x Patta x Parra Air Max 1 - Cherrywood. To get a pair in my size brand new is would cost me between Dh8,000 and Dh 10,000.” Jack Brett
“If I had all the money, I would approach Nike and ask them to do my own Air Force 1, that’s one of my dreams.” Yaseen Benchouche
“There’s nothing out there yet that I’d pay an insane amount for, but I’d love to create my own shoe with Tinker Hatfield and Jordan.” Joshua Cox
“I think I’d buy a defunct footwear brand; I’d like the challenge of reinterpreting a brand’s history and changing options.” Kris Balerite
“I’d stir up a creative collaboration with designers Martin Margiela of the mixed patchwork sneakers, and Yohji Yamamoto.” Hussain Moloobhoy
“If I had all the money in the world, I’d live somewhere where I’d never have to wear shoes again.” Raj Malhotra
Famous left-handers
- Marie Curie
- Jimi Hendrix
- Leonardo Di Vinci
- David Bowie
- Paul McCartney
- Albert Einstein
- Jack the Ripper
- Barack Obama
- Helen Keller
- Joan of Arc
About Karol Nawrocki
• Supports military aid for Ukraine, unlike other eurosceptic leaders, but he will oppose its membership in western alliances.
• A nationalist, his campaign slogan was Poland First. "Let's help others, but let's take care of our own citizens first," he said on social media in April.
• Cultivates tough-guy image, posting videos of himself at shooting ranges and in boxing rings.
• Met Donald Trump at the White House and received his backing.
Honeymoonish
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Not Dark Yet
Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer
Four stars
If you go
The flights
There are various ways of getting to the southern Serengeti in Tanzania from the UAE. The exact route and airstrip depends on your overall trip itinerary and which camp you’re staying at.
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Kilimanjaro International Airport from Dh1,350 return, including taxes; this can be followed by a short flight from Kilimanjaro to the Serengeti with Coastal Aviation from about US$700 (Dh2,500) return, including taxes. Kenya Airways, Emirates and Etihad offer flights via Nairobi or Dar es Salaam.
The chef's advice
Troy Payne, head chef at Abu Dhabi’s newest healthy eatery Sanderson’s in Al Seef Resort & Spa, says singles need to change their mindset about how they approach the supermarket.
“They feel like they can’t buy one cucumber,” he says. “But I can walk into a shop – I feed two people at home – and I’ll walk into a shop and I buy one cucumber, I’ll buy one onion.”
Mr Payne asks for the sticker to be placed directly on each item, rather than face the temptation of filling one of the two-kilogram capacity plastic bags on offer.
The chef also advises singletons not get too hung up on “organic”, particularly high-priced varieties that have been flown in from far-flung locales. Local produce is often grown sustainably, and far cheaper, he says.
The specs: 2018 Jeep Compass
Price, base: Dh100,000 (estimate)
Engine: 2.4L four-cylinder
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Power: 184bhp at 6,400rpm
Torque: 237Nm at 3,900rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.4L / 100km
Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
Fixture and table
UAE finals day: Friday, April 13 at Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
- 3pm, UAE Conference: Dubai Tigers v Sharjah Wanderers
- 6.30pm, UAE Premiership: Dubai Exiles v Abu Dhabi Harlequins
UAE Premiership – final standings
- Dubai Exiles
- Abu Dhabi Harlequins
- Jebel Ali Dragons
- Dubai Hurricanes
- Dubai Sports City Eagles
- Abu Dhabi Saracens
