HILTON GROUP has quietly applied for a licence to operate a casino at its Paddington hotel, the former Great Western. The group, which sold its previous casino interests almost four years ago, wants a “very discreet” gaming room in the unused basement.

The application is a joint venture with, among others, Alan Goodenough, the industry veteran who used to run London Clubs International. Hilton insists that the venture is a one-off and no more are planned at its hotels. But the company has ambitions to enter the free-for-all in the gaming market by building a £200 million “super-casino” in Blackpool.

The way the law works, if the Gaming Board approves the Paddington opening, this will make it much easier for Hilton to start up casinos in Blackpool or elsewhere.

THE Financial Services Authority has, for reasons best known to itself, started to distribute own-brand sweets. A visitor to its Canary Wharf offices yesterday was offered some small sticks of rock with the regulator’s name on them. “Take as many as you want — we’ve ordered lots of them but they’re the wrong colour.” The sweets do not match the FSA’s purple and green logo, it seems. “It’s a duff batch,” says my man there. “They taste just the same — disgusting.”

Will it suck too?

SAMSUNG, the Korean electronics concern, is tempting fate by offering 200,000 free flights to Europe if you join its “Fun Club”, whatever that is. The last consumer goods firm to launch such a scheme was Hoover, in the early 1990s — which became a PR disaster when the flights ran out, leaving thousands of angry purchasers of vacuum cleaners.

The omens for the Samsung venture are not good, with some sort of glitch affecting the relevant section of its website. The company blames higher than expected demand — just like Hoover, then — which is causing “slower upload times during periods of exceptionally high traffic”.

PROOF of the parlous state of the West End property market: a whole floor in one of the landmark buildings on Haymarket is going for only £15 a sq ft. The building houses the New Zealand High Commission, and I hear one of the tenants is looking for a quick sub-let of the tenth floor, which has panoramic 360-degree views of London.

The case is afoot

NEXT week sees the auction of the various items of Marks & Spencer property — furniture, mannequins, dentists’ chairs — that were left at its old Baker Street headquarters after the move to Paddington, as I mentioned the other day. But two significant assets are not included in the sale. It is not generally known that Baker Street boasted a Lowry and an even more valuable Monet.

Where are the pictures now? “They’ve been successfully relocated to our new offices,” M&S says. Where in the building? “I can’t tell you that for security reasons.” Perhaps the next visitor to Stuart Rose’s office could keep their eyes open.

CHEEKY offer of the season comes from the Kingston upon Thames firm that has renamed its Nordic pine Christmas trees “Miscellaneous faxing services, November”. So if you order a tree, you get an invoice for just that. “Then you could probably claim the cost back on expenses,” says the firm’s e-mail. So are you a seller of Christmas trees or an office supplies firm, I ask the proprietor? “Both. You have to be flexible these days.”

city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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