Size matters to clubbers

One of the biggest nightclubs in Europe is opening a venue in Brighton rather than London or any other South Coast resort.

It's a considerable coup for Brighton to get the first operation by Cream

outside the north west and shows the resort's status as a clubbing capital.

There's just one little difficulty to overcome and that's the size of the club. Neighbours, supported by the council, had objected to its holding around 2,000 people and a public inquiry will be held into that next month.

The club is on the south side of the seafront and not next to people's homes. What developers will have to do is persuade a planning inspector it can operate there without disturbing neighbours.

It should be possible provided all the access to the club is from Madeira Drive rather than Marine Parade and the building is properly soundproofed.

And it's yet another sign that when it comes to entertainment, Brighton is The Place to Be.

Dirty cash flow?

One of the big surprises at the Portobello sewage works public inquiry has been the attitude of English Nature.

The conservation agency has not joined other environmental groups in objecting to Southern Water's plans to upgrade the existing works at Telscombe Cliffs.

Now it transpires English Nature would be entitled to a six-figure

compensation deal should the water giant build an observation centre and then have to close it down for further expansion.

What's even odder is that English Nature's conservation officer for

Sussex knows nothing about it.

English Nature owes the inquiry some sort of explanation. Otherwise concerned locals will conclude the compensation deal and the lack of objection, like the sewage, stink.

Crowning glory

No one knew where the celebrated crown was on the old Warnes Hotel in Worthing until the Argus searched its files.

We found the emblem, salvaged from the hotel ruins after a fire, was in the safe keeping of the Worthing

Society.

It was installed on the hotel in 1936 after Emperor Haile Selassie stayed there for six weeks.

Now when new flats are built on the site, the historic emblem can be restored as its crowning glory.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.