Is Belfast the new Hollywood? There is, apparently, a flourishing film business there and tomorrow sees the premier at The Waterfront Hall of Closing the Ring, which is backed by the financier Robert Whitton. He is the man behind aAIM Group, the confusingly named property investment vehicle — it isn’t quoted on AIM — that has Sir David Frost as chairman and Sir Alex Ferguson and Simon Cowell as investors.

Whitton is friends with a local producer, Jo Gilbert, whose company, the Real Holywood Productions, made the film. (Holywood is a suburb of Belfast, if you didn’t know, and does not have a large sign attached to a nearby hill). The film is a transatlantic love story involving a Second World War bomber and stars the actress Mischa Barton. Whitton is a brave man — previous City types who got involved in films, such as Guy Hands, have found it the easiest way of turning a large fortune into a small one.

A curious job ad appears. A large, well-known and privately owned team in the North, probably football and competing “at the highest level in the elite division”, is seeking a chief executive to develop money-spinning ideas off the pitch, including the sales of television rights. Most successful soccer companies are quoted and almost all have chief executives already to drum up business elsewhere. My inquiries fail to identify the employer. Any thoughts out there?

Present today under one roof, seven rugby players, three BBC presenters, two boxers, two Chelsea pensioners, one model and, so far as I know, a partridge in a pear tree. All will be at the Broadgate offices of Icap, Michael Spencer’s inter-dealer broker, for the 15th annual charity day, when all revenues are donated to charity. The target this year is £10 million, after £7.1 million was raised last year. Also present, one member of the Royal Family, whose identity is a tight secret. It isn’t Harry, nor William, who was there last year. It isn’t Charles or Camilla,

I understand. Edward wouldn’t be much of a pull and Andrew is everywhere these days as Britain’s putative ambassador for business. My money’s on Zara, if only for her sporting connections.

News from a bunch of wrinkly old heavy metallers back on the stage again. No, not them, Iron Maiden, just re-signed to EMI, and their long-time sidekicks Andy Taylor and Rod Smallwood. The two, and the group, exited Sanctuary, the quoted music company they created, as it imploded around them and are still together. “I can’t wait to get back on the road next year,” says Smallwood, who has to be in his late 50s, though he probably wouldn’t thank me for pointing it out.

Pret A Manger, the sandwich chain, has 14 outlets in New York and has made much of its expansion there. There is a line on its sandwich boxes and paper bags, which reads: “You won’t have to wait and feel like a wally.” There is then a helpful definition of a wally, a word unknown in any US lexicon. This is, apparently, an attempt to market Pret as endearing, delightfully English eccentrics, but it is causing confusion. “Nobody understands it here,” says my source in the Big Apple.

David Walton was an economist who died tragically young, at 43, in June 2006, not long into his tenure on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. The City, including his alma mater Goldman Sachs, clubbed together last December to create the David Walton Memorial Fund. The fund has now said that it will support a new scholarship financing one new doctoral student per year at Oxford for up to three years, in perpetuity.

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