FIRST TUESDAY, the internet networking business that typified the dot-com boom, is back. Can a dot-com collapse be far behind? Time will tell, but some think there are definite similarities between today and those heady times in 1999.

Now renamed Second Chance Tuesday, the first networking event was at a club on Shaftesbury Avenue last night, attended by firms with names like Bloodybigspider, Hotdoguk and million dollar homepage. Sounds familiar. Also there, Julie Meyer, one of the founders of the original First Tuesday. Her business was sold to an Israeli investment house for £33.5 million at the top of the last boom. (Its website still exists, albeit in dormant form, together with several offshoots.) The new venture’s slogan: “We’re going to party like it’s 1999.” We have all been here before.

SKYEPHARMA, the battered drugs firm that you would have thought had enough enemies already, yesterday ran a clarification on the Stock Exchange screens that its two new board appointments were for one year, in line with best practice, and not for two years, “as incorrectly reported in the press”.

In this paper, as it happens. The source of the wrong information, I have no hesitation in declaring, was Ian Gowrie-Smith, the ousted chairman, who is still on the board.

Smashing stuff

MARK BRUMBY, the leisure analyst at Oriel Securities, points to an interesting new trend. The pub and bar operators have already tried to rope the big supermarkets into the Government’s purge on binge drinking. Now at least three have blamed consumers getting tanked up at home first for poor trading.

“In the words of one late night operator,” says Brumby, “people are coming out later and drunker.” I wonder. Are supermarket drinks, as the on-trade claims, underpriced? Or are the drinks served in smart bars ridiculously overpriced? Discuss.

TODAY is the board meeting for Fullsix, the Italian marketing company a quarter-owned by WPP and tied up in the ongoing wrangle over alleged fraud there. The meeting is an important one. It was to have taken place on Monday but had to be postponed. I am told someone forgot to tell one of the directors. How very Italian.

Cumming aboard

A COUPLE of months ago there was a bid approach for Workspace, which provides commercial office accommodation. It was not welcomed and nothing more was heard. There were suggestions it had something to do with Peter Cummings, head of the corporate banking side at HBOS.

Half-right. I hear the potential bidders were none other than Sir Stuart Lipton and Elliott Bernerd, the property veterans, who were in the process of setting up their £1 billion investment vehicle, Chelsfield Partners. Cummings is, indeed, on the board, and HBOS provided the finance.

AN E-MAIL arrives requesting a subscription to “your magazine”. On closer examination, it is clear that the sender wants The Economist. Now, to err is human and all that, but the company in question helps clients to “meet the risk challenges of the international marketplace”. “We pride ourselves on our knowledge,” claims its website.

city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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