Something for the weekend (hurrah!): the Trevor Kent column

In which our star columnist, Trevor Kent, prompted by EAT’s first birthday, makes a comeback (purely for this week, unfortunately) and in a misguided attempt at gallantry only just manages to avoid comparing the editor to an old banger.  Still, never mind. Welcome back, Big T, and many more appearances please.

Something for the next month or two
 
Happy First Birthday indeed to our dear lady editor the EAT-in-chief, whose initials could not be more appropriate. RR – the pinnacle of perfection, purring but pulsating power, stately and restrained, yet with an exciting whiff of leather and a hint of walnut – the very spirit of ecstasy to many of us. Thank you Ms Rosalind Renshaw for giving birth to the most informative and up-to-date organ available to a practitioner of the noble art of horse, sorry house, trading. Three times a week is a feat ... no, go not there, Big T – quit whilst you’re ahead.
 
It was way back in 1991 (some of you will remember the beginnings of the other ‘crash’ about then) when I unguardedly made a comment that I, as NAEA President at the time, was worried about the toll the market was taking on my members and that I was considering hiring a chaplain! It was taken rather more seriously than I intended, and I made my one-and-only appearance on the BBC’s Sunday morning religious slot!

Estate agents caring for their fellow man and woman seemed anathema to some then, but how much more surprised the media would be if we expressed similar concerns in 2009, I wonder.

However, some do care still, and I commend to you the NAEA’s Benevolent Fund which has recently been relaunched to help fellow agents (and dependants) who find themselves in severe difficulties. If you feel so disposed, I know a cheque, however small, to the Fund at the NAEA in Warwick would be welcomed with open arms.
 
By the way, the broadcast actually produced applicants for the job! I well remember the delightful team of Tony Clark and Jenny Corn (does anyone remember what they did for the Association in the early days – lovely people) and I discussing how to explain to various retired gentlemen of the cloth (I can safely say ‘gentlemen’ as ladies were yet to get their chasubles out back in 1991) that I wasn’t actually being THAT serious.

However, one applicant particularly mirrored the calibre estate agents would have expected of their Minister and confessor – a retired Archbishop, no less. OK, albeit from a long forgotten colonial outpost – but an Archbishop nonetheless!
 
Now I’ve not name-dropped for months (due mainly to my self-imposed exile from your monitors), but you will be pleased to learn I had another little chat with my pal David Cameron last Friday evening. He was concerned, as always, to hear that his 98.9 % Tory-voting estate agency friends are still having as tough a time as ever. However, he put a solution to me which I felt was both ingenious and audacious in equal measure. 

Rather than contribute to the NAEA’s Fund for distressed gentlefolk of the property industry, he suggested you all kindly direct your collective generosity to his Marginal Seat Fund. Apparently there are 100 chairs out there that need to have Conservative bums planted on them at the next election to guarantee an end to Labour’s reign of terror. Cheques please, made payable to me, Big T, can be sent to Kent House, Gerrards Cross, and I’ll direct the resultant avalanche of cash where it’s needed to return an anti-HIP, low-taxation, low Stamp Duty, high CGT/IHT threshold administration to Westminster.
 
Keep cool this weekend, mes amis.     
 
Big T (still going – but slower)