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Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe snapped one up for £2.76million in 2017, while the Earl of Rosse put his on the market just over a year ago for £3million.
No, I’m not referring to supercars or beachside second homes but private boxes at the Royal Albert Hall.
But is Sir Jim being short changed? Three of his fellow box owners have, I can disclose, begun a High Court action, alleging that they’re being unlawfully excluded from using the seats in their boxes, ownership of which entitles them to attend most events.
The trio, Arthur George, 78, who owns twelve seats, and father and son William and Alexander Stockler, who own a more modest four seats, say they can be excluded only as stipulated by the Royal Albert Hall Act 1966.
However, they and all other seat holders are being barred on many more days under a document called ‘Memorandum and Guidelines’ which, they claim, has no legal basis.
The range and number of events has certainly expanded in recent decades, far beyond what might have been imagined when The Beatles included a lyric about the Albert Hall in their 1967 song, A Day In The Life.
Since then, it’s hosted the first official sumo wrestling tournament ever staged outside Japan in the sport’s entire 1,500-year history, not to mention Cirque du Soleil, DJ ‘Mixing Championships’, and countless awards nights, including the raucous BRIT Awards.
Arthur George, 78, who owns twelve seats, and father and son William and Alexander Stockler, who own a more modest four seats, say they can be excluded only as stipulated by the Royal Albert Hall Act 1966. Pictured: The venue in Kensington, London
However, they and all other seat holders are being barred on many more days under a document called ‘Memorandum and Guidelines’ which, they claim, has no legal basis. Pictured: Last Night of the Proms 2018
Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe snapped one up for £2.76million in 2017, while the Earl of Rosse put his on the market just over a year ago for £3million
That’s part of the problem. Construction of the Hall was funded, in part, by the sale of 1,276 of its 5,272 seats to individual buyers, in 1866. Many have been passed down, generation after generation.
William Stockler tells me: ‘The Hall is a charity but this was created after the seat holders were granted their rights.
‘We support and believe in the charity but it has no ability to take away our rights and reduce the occasions when we can use our seats.’
A spokesman for the hall says it ‘acts fully in accordance with the guidelines agreed by seat holders annually at the AGM’, before adding: ‘We cannot comment on a live legal case.’
Stockler, a retired solicitor, is unimpressed. ‘The Memorandum and Guidelines are promoted by the charity and approved only by a small minority of seat holders with the intention of imposing their wills on all seat holders and indeed on Parliament.
‘This is why we have taken these proceedings.’
Now, it seems, the High Court will have to decide.
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