newsletter
Ian Starrett
Tuesday 6th September 2005
There's no business like showbusiness. Certainly when it comes to spending, those who earn their crust in the entertainment business tend to splash out when they decide to party.
The champagne-guzzling generous spenders who came to Londonderry on Saturday for the sixth annual Big Buzz Irish Entertainment Awards brought to Londonderry yet another showbusiness boost to the local economy.
Hotels and guest houses played host to stars and fans alike and, as organiser Robin Elliott told me, this gig once again put Londonderry well and truly on the map. As, indeed, did the BBC Radio 1 One Big Weekend event last summer, which attracted 20,000 people from all over the UK to the Waterside, and again in May when the Derry Jazz & Big Band Festival packed out accommodation on both sides of the north west border.
Not only do entertainment events like these boost the economy, they also bring favourable publicity to the city, which too often makes the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Instead, for example, of pictures of rioting and petrolbombed homes, yesterday pretty Big Buzz night photographs of the likes of beauties Mylene Klass and Christine Bleakley in Londonderry adorned the newspapers here.
I listened to TV presenter
Lisa I'Anson at the glittering event on Saturday night say that she took a long time getting to this city, but what a fabulous place it had turned out to be when she finally got here.
