Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou will be returning to his spiritual home next week when he attends the launch of an easyHotel in Luton.

The 58-room hotel, a refurbishment of the old St Lawrence Hotel, is the entrepreneur's seventh easyHotel and there are a further 20 in the pipeline for this year.

The easyGroup boss is said to be particularly excited about the potential of the hotel business, reckoning that the sky's the limit as far as the easyHotel brand is concerned.

Given that it is a franchise business, I expect he's probably right, although I must admit to distinctly mixed feelings at the prospect of hundreds of orange hotels cropping up all over the world.

The launch rate of the Luton hotel will be £19.95 a room, which even by normal budget hotel standards is cheap as chips.

I am told the price was chosen as a reminder of the launch of easyJet at nearby Luton airport back in 1995.

A neat touch.

Anyone dig tractors?

Despite the enthusiasm of my tractor-mad three-year-old son for them, I would not previously have described JCBs as sexy. But I may have to think again.

At last month's construction industry gathering in Las Vegas, the maker of heavy-duty vehicles hired a small outfit called Lavish Theatrical Experiences to choreograph a burlesque show, featuring dancing diggers accompanied by an aerial ballet performed by nine Vegas showgirls.

A sort of Cirque des Tracteurs, I guess.

Vodka from ciderland

On the subject of tractors, I see that the Herefordshire farmer who has just sold a majority stake in Tyrrells Potato Crisps to private equity is about to put his potatoes to another use.

Will Chase, whose deal with Langholm Capital values Tyrrells at about £40 million, is waiting for clearance from HM Revenue & Customs to start producing Tyrrells Potato Vodka.

Using potatoes too small to be made into crisps, Chase's new distillery will produce up to 3,500 bottles of vodka a week.

I'm not sure how the locals of Leominster feel about having a vodka distillery on their doorstep, but I suppose it's no worse than those strawberry polytunnels that disfigure the countryside.

Dreary Darling

During an unprecedented period when we've seen a run on a British bank and a Wall Street powerhouse all but go under, do we really need to hear lame anecdotes from Alistair Darling?

Speaking in Washington about measures to protect the world banking system from collapse, the Chancellor recalled how, as a boy, he was transfixed by the promise on a pound note by the Bank of England to “pay the bearer on demand”.

He told the audience: “I remember asking my Dad whether, if I took my note to the Bank of England, they would pay out. My Dad said he was doubtful.” How the throng chortled. Not.

Some chicken . . .

Mironovskiy Hleboproduct, a Ukrainian poultry and grain producer, has hired Morgan Stanley to raise up to $500 million via a listing on the London Stock Exchange valuing the company at about $2.3 billion.

A case of chicken feed or chicken Kiev?

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