CITY MINER GOES FOR GOLD WITH ROYAL GIFT
DISASTER has been averted at the Palace, The Capitalist can reveal, after a well-connected miner stepped in to replenish the stocks of the Welsh gold traditionally used to make the royal wedding bands.
Gold from the mines of the Dolgellau field in North Wales has been used to make the royal wedding bands since Anglo Saxon times. But stocks of the precious metal have been running low ever since April, after Kate Middleton’s wedding band left the royal household with only a tiny amount of the precious metal in its possession.
Step forward Ed McDermott, the managing director of Gold Mines of Wales Limited and schoolfriend of the Duchess of Cambridge, who handed over one ounce of pure Welsh gold from the Clogau mine to Sir Alan Reid, keeper of the Privy Purse.
The independent mining and exploration group, understood to be backed by Dubai-based investors, is not currently in production. But the company’s chairman Tony Roberts – also the executive director of East Coast Mining – is overseeing an exploration project to re-open the mines of the Dolgellau field, in a move that could create 30-40 jobs within two-and-half years for the economically depressed Gwynedd area.
“Community, tradition and history are a major part of this area of Wales and we are doing our best to continue that,” said McDermott, after donating enough gold to the Palace to make “an entire wedding ring”. So who will be the next royal to walk down the aisle? “Harry hopefully, but who knows who the bride will be.”
RUGBY LEAGUES
IG INDEX went into the seven-a-side rugby tournament organised by headhunting firm Compliant Global Search at Rosslyn Park as the favourites, after winning the Neptune City Sevens tournament earlier in the year.
But they were no match for the accountants from Deloitte, who beat the spreadbetters 28-20 in the final to come out on top of the 16 competing teams, which also included Brooks MacDonald, the British Police, Nomura, the Bank of England and Credit Suisse.
The man of the charity match – which raised £7,000 for Child Victims of Crime – was Tim Kavanagh, captain of the IG Index side, while the tournament’s organiser Anthony Howitt from Compliant led his team to a “graceful disappearance” in the group stages.
ONE MAN IN A BOAT
CONVERSATION stopped at the Cowes Week cocktail party hosted by armed forces charity Toe in the Water as soldiers leapt from their planes into the marina.
“It was like a Dairy Milk ad,” said Sam Walker from Aberdeen Asset Management, who watched the parachute display by the Royal Artillery regiment with her colleagues Chris Ellyatt, Patrick Walker and Michelle Calcutt.
Walker later met Princess Anne, who came to Cowes to inspect the rowing boat that ex-Commando Charlie Martell plans to row solo over the 1,000 miles from Japan to the west coast of America in aid of Toe in the Water and Give Them a Sporting Chance. “He has already done the Atlantic; now he is doing the Pacific,” said Walker.