26 January - Speculation but could it be uncomfortably close to the truth?
It has been an interesting few weeks on Bonkers with some out of the ordinary subjects cropping up.
An emailed question said “What is happening at Sidcup Manor House?” to which the
honest answer was “I don’t know” and to be absolutely honest I had forgotten all about it.
A search of Bonkers revealed ten blogs that mentioned the Manor House,
the last in 2023
alluding to “recent developments”. I never did find out what they were. I knew
that there were plans some years before to develop it into a hotel, I even
took a look inside in 2017, but the hotel idea apparently came to nothing. Or have I missed something?
I read all ten
Manor House blogs again and stumbled upon an interesting one. 11th April 2019 which revealed plans for
the Sidcup Manor House and the old Blockbuster store just a couple of hundred yards
apart from each other. Both, it recorded, were being masterminded by Deputy Director
Jane Richardson. BiB
archived the Blockbuster plans; something else I had forgotten about.
Maybe
I was wrong yesterday to entirely rule out
any connection between the usually super efficient Mrs. Richardson’s departure and the failure, for now
at least, of one of her pet projects and I am still wondering how anyone thought
it was ever going to be a viable proposition. My interest in cinema has led me to speculate on possible scenarios.
There is a lot of guesswork here but…
The earliest Storyteller screenings start at around 11 a.m. and the latest
around 8 p.m. so allowing for adverts that is at least twelve hours a day;
plus at least another hour to prepare and clean up afterwards. An absolute minimum of
13 hours a day and probably more. Seven days a week makes it nearly 100 hours of operation.
For staff you are going to need someone to sell the tickets, someone to press
all the right buttons behind the scenes and someone front of house to be on hand
in case of emergencies. 300 hours of
staff costs, and as you can see I am setting the numbers ridiculously low. At
minimum wage that is going to be £4,000 a week with National Insurance on top. I
doubt the projectionist will be on minimum wage, the national average is around
£30,000 a year, so clearly we are looking at a wage bill in excess of £5,000 a week.
Ticket sales are something I can only guess at but if my Tuesday visit was typical, and
with something between six and nine performances a day over three screens we
are looking at 750 tickets a week. Let’s call it 1,000. Maybe Tuesdays are
quieter than the weekends. At a maximum price of £10 a ticket that’s £10,000 a
week. Some are a lot less than £10.
But hang on a minute; Rachel Thieves takes 20% of that and the standard take for
the film distributors is 50%, some a bit more. So of £10,000, £2000 goes in VAT
and £5,000 to the film distributor.
There is some guess work here but clearly something similar has been going on or
the Really Local Group (Blockbuster) wouldn’t have gone the way of Blockbuster
itself.
God help them if a projector bulb blows!
Another thing that struck me and has for some time is the choice of films.
Currently Conclave (Black Bear), Maria (StudioCanal), Nosferatu (Universal),
Paddington in Peru (StudioCanal), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Paramount), We Live in
Time (StudioCanal), Wicked (Universal) and Wolfman (Universal).
Where are Mufasa The Lion King and Moana 2 which you can see everywhere else?
Both Disneys and Disney is well known for taking a tough line with creditors.
It is unlikely that the other distributors are going out of their way to keep The
Storyteller afloat which leaves only one obvious source of funds. Is Bexley Council the landlord?
Is my 2+2 making 5?
If Bexley is
or has been the source of money for The Storyteller we are not going to find
out until the Summer when they must make their accounts available for
inspection. If they are trying to keep the lid on things now you can be sure that
almost no one knows about it. Guessing again, someone at Capita perhaps, someone at the cinema and
no more than a couple in Bexley Council. Quite likely not even a Councillor. I
have seen senior officers who know the truth sit next to a Cabinet Member and
listen to him unknowingly spout a load of untruths while the Deputy Director
sits there letting him dig himself in ever deeper. Dishonesty at Bexley Council has known no bounds; I had hoped it had gone away but maybe they have simply
got a lot better at hiding it.
@tonyofsidcup discovered just how quickly they delete their emails. I must find time to make an FOI.