"The heights of great men were not attained in sudden flight, But while others slept, they toiled upwards through the night."

- Mavy, 25th May 2006

In the spirit of going into businesses that we know very little about, last night we finished the new suiting website. £90 hand-tailored suits for everyone! The quote above was inspired by the dark windows of a dormant UBS opposite as Mavy searched for quotes that he could string together as his own.

The Innovator and I told the permanent members of staff the idea this week, they are still working for free. Enough said I think.

Back to pick up the story where we left off: a trip to Malta to meet the gambling regulators.

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Out of the airport and into the oldest taxi we could find. Even had a wooden steering wheel.

Lino was the taxi driver's name, and with a tipex'd business card to match the car, he instantly became our friend. Always there when we wanted to leave, and also when we didn't. We like to imagine that it was because he was just so captivated by our stories of taking over the gambling world, but he probably just wanted to practice his English...anyway, you have his number now, it'll save you a queue at the airport.

Lino became our guide to this idilic island, ferrying us from the boardroom of our friendly accountants...

...to the Lotteries and Gaming Authority. It was here that we faced our toughest challenge so far in terms of convincing anyone. Extremely nervous and voices quavering like little girls in front on Take That we presented our idea to the head of the Maltese Gaming Commission. After initially saying that it was impossible, Mario eventually conceeded that it was a pretty good idea, and he has seen everything. He finally encouraged us to continue in our quest to mount what we hope will become the biggest gaming phenomenon since hopscotch.

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Lino also took us to the old town to relax over the weekend, unfortunately, the innovator got stuck whilst playing around with some of the playground equipment. I may have parachuted our office keys into danger, but at least the engineering degree came in handy in removing the Innovator from this mess.

Great to hear so many of you asking when we are going live. There was a slight hold up in the official procedures. Apparently our business plan impressed the Maltese licensing official reading it so much that he had a heart-attack! Luckily, he's out of hospital now and has given us the green light to continue to phase two. So, no definite launch date yet, but we are planning to go live in late June. We'll let you know the official date here first, so watch this space.

Check out the new column on the right from the King of Chat. It is his blog all about 'selling an unknown product', and his own unique backstage account of our activities here at one sun street.

Another new full time staff member … I understand him about as well as the old guy in the armchair on the fast show…so we’ll call him Taz. Looks like we'll be running at capacity in the barrack hotel over the summer.

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As the Innovator mentioned, we had a conference

No ordinary conference, but a chance for Stelios, the owner of Easyjet, to meet us. I also took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his orange boiler-suited troops and the way they captured the hearts and wallets of a nation.


Look out for us and the barrack boys in our boiler suits on Trafalgar square this summer, around August I reckon. The colour? Pink, of course!

Hello everybody.... Long time no speak (sorry about that). The truth is that we have all been busy trying to sell stuff while waiting for the software company to do their business. Markets every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We'll cut you a good bargain if you mention the blog.

Still on the catch up..

We needed to visit Malta to convince our accountant and regulator that our new type of casino was viable. But first, we had to convince them that we were viable. First problem - Its 5.30pm , we have a flight the next day, a conference in the evening and nothing to show that there is any sort of credibility behind our company - apart from a company number.

Hmmm... Thank heavens for PC World, which sells photo printers and Business card paper.

We now had the peace of mind to go to our conference, have a few glasses of wine and come back to design and print them.

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Conference (The Visionary will talk about)
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It didn't take us long to settle on a question mark for the logo, and a nice red colour background like the one above. Professional looking business cards. 1am finish, 6am taxi to the airport... lovely.