High-wire acts abound at new Jurys Cabaret

Business Opinion: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the all-new Jurys Irish Cabaret. Gone are are the traditional acts. No set dancing, no harps, no fiddles and definitely no mother-in-law jokes.

Instead a whole new range of artists drawn from the four corners of Ireland and further abroad will amaze, entertain and puzzle you.

Watch in awe as the Fantastic High Flying Doyle family led by the great Bernie and accompanied by the Fearless Beatty wield their 33 per cent shareholding with awesome skill.

Time and again the board of Jurys, led by the Indefatigable Hooper, will try and sell the company from under them to the Precinct Consortium. Time and again, the largest shareholders will resist, force compromises, call bluffs and play one side off against the others. Cheer their audacity as you try and guess what they are actually trying to achieve.

You will be left breathless by the antics of the Precinct Consortium as they try to buy Jurys with their amazing disappearing financial backers and their ever-shrinking acceptance threshold. Precinct will make Anglo Irish Bank disappear overnight to be replaced by Halifax Bank of Scotland.

They will keep you on the edge of your seats, only to surprise you by making their whole bid disappear.

But you will be left tantalised by the prospect that they will return in the guise of a new act, the Reuben Brothers, who are making their Irish debut in the New Jurys Irish Cabaret. After a stunningly successful run in London, the Reubens are finally here, but for a limited run only.

Also transferring from London is that other well-known international act, the Hedge Funds Chorus. Irish audiences know them well after their successful runs at Eircom and a host of other Irish takeover battles. Once again they will stun you with their audacity as they wager huge sums on the outcome of the contest.

But nothing will make you gasp in awe as much as the antics of the legendary Sean Dunne and his glamorous assistant Gayle. Never before has this sort of act been seen in Ireland. Nobody has ever spent the sort of money that the legendary Dunne is prepared to pony up for a piece of real estate known as the Ballsbridge Site. He will stun you by conjuring seemingly endless amounts of cash up with incredible ease to buy this prized Jurys assets for €260 million and then 20 per cent of the company itself. For his finale he will race to try and buy over 25 per cent and put himself in the driving seat, able to block further asset sales and takeovers.

But will he succeed? Or will he fall foul of his rival, the Mysterious Bidder, better known to Irish audiences as Liam Carroll?

Carroll will seek to reprise his successful role as party pooper, which he played to such acclaim in the Dunloe Ewart takeover battle in 2001. There he put an end to efforts by others to take the company private.

Only those with tickets for the extraordinary event that is the New Jurys Irish Cabaret will be able to watch to see if the Mysterious Bidder looks to forge alliances with the Fantastic High Flying Doyles, or will it be with the the Legendary Dunne and his glamorous assistant Gayle.

Enjoy the spectacle as they make and break alliances. Feel the tension rise as all sides try to sound each other out without giving too much away. Whose mask will slip first?

And as if this was not enough, the promoters of the New Jurys Irish Cabaret are hopeful that they will be able introduce two news acts to this already packed programme.

We are still hopeful that the the great Quids Quinlan will be able to make a guest appearance. But it is contingent on Quids finding time in his West End schedule. Paddy Kelly, currently touring successfully in Eastern Europe, may also fly-in for a special cameo appearance.

Unfortunately, the management of the New Jurys Irish Cabaret regret that we will not be able to bring you one of out our regular acts, the Irish Institutional Investor. This well-known act has withdrawn from the performance and is appearing in a number of rival revues, having banked substantial box office receipts from the successful run to date of the New Jurys Irish Cabaret, which has pushed ticket prices above €18. Small investors should do likewise.