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Good luck, Yaiza!
Roll of the dice, sister!
Before saying goodbye to Yaiza, the family has been practising the Zero Conditional and playing some games to honoured their croupier.
Finally, The Grandma has explained one story about salmon and another about the importance of Navajo and Basque languages during the WWII.
More information: Zero Conditional
The Hippodrome is a building on the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, London.
The name was used for many different theatres and music halls, of which the London Hippodrome is one of only a few survivors. Hippodrome is an archaic word referring to places that host horse races and other forms of equestrian entertainment.
The London Hippodrome was opened in 1900. It was designed by Frank Matcham for Moss Empires chaired by Edward Moss and built for £250,000 as a hippodrome for circus and variety performances. The venue gave its first show on 15 January 1900, a music hall revue entitled Giddy Ostend with Little Tich. The conductor was Georges Jacobi.
Entry to the venue was through a bar, dressed as a ship's saloon. The performance space featured both a proscenium stage and an arena that sank into 400 tons, when full, for aquatic spectacles. The tank featured eight central fountains, and a circle of fountains around the side. Entrances at the side of the auditorium could also be flooded, and used for the entry of boats.
Shows included equestrian acts, elephants and polar bears, and acrobats would dive from a minstrels' gallery above a sliding roof, in the centre of the proscenium arch. The auditorium featured cantilevered galleries, removing the columns that often obstructed views in London theatres, the whole was covered by a painted glass retractable roof, that could be illuminated at night. The building included the headquarters of Moss Empires.
In 1909, it was reconstructed by Matcham as a music-hall and variety theatre with 1340 seats in stalls, mezzanine, gallery and upper gallery levels. It was here that Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake received its English première by the Ballets Russes in 1910. The Albert de Courville revues were performed here from December 1912.
The Hippodrome hosted the first official jazz gig in the United Kingdom, by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, in 1919.
Its reputation was for revue and musical comedy, among them The Five O'Clock Girl, the West End production of Vincent Youmans' hit Broadway musical Hit The Deck (1928) and also Mr. Cinders, both in 1929; Ivor Novello's Perchance to Dream in 1945 with Margaret Rutherford; and the revue High Spirits in 1953 with Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill.
Julie Andrews made her stage debut here at the age of 12. From 1949 to 1951 it was the London equivalent of the Folies Bergère.
The original interior was demolished in 1958, and Bernard Delfont had the Hippodrome converted into the nightclub The Talk of the Town. It featured appearances by many of the popular artistes of the time.
In 2009, the lease on the Hippodrome was acquired by Leicester-born father and son entrepreneurs Jimmy and Simon Thomas, who began an extensive restoration programme taking the Hippodrome back to Matcham's original designs for use as a casino and entertainment venue. During the planning stage, the adjacent Cranbourn Mansions building became available and plans were redrafted to incorporate this former gentlemen's apartment block into the design, doubling the eventual floorspace and linked using a new structure sited within the existing light well between the two buildings.
Investment in the building reportedly came to over £40 million, the funds being raised by the Thomas family from the sale of a number of bingo halls prior to the UK smoking ban, which made it illegal to smoke within an enclosed workplace, on 1 July 2007.
The Hippodrome Casino was opened on 13 July.
The venue on opening included four floors of gaming, including a Gold Room casino sited in the original basement with access directly into Chinatown to the rear of the building, Heliot restaurant, six bars, a smoking terrace and The Matcham Room cabaret theatre. The restoration and construction of the casino was followed on the blog of LBC presenter Steve Allen.
In January 2013, the casino was awarded Best Land-based Casino at the Totally Gaming Awards, which also gave Jimmy Thomas a Life Achievement award for his contribution to the gaming and entertainment industries.
On 4 March 2013, Simon Thomas announced the opening of Pokerstars LIVE, a collaboration between the Hippodrome and Pokerstars, the world's largest online poker website. While initially on the fourth floor, in 2020 Pokerstars LIVE moved to the third floor where it currently resides.
The Matcham Room at the Hippodrome Casino is currently the home of Magic Mike Live London.
In 2020, construction was completed on an expansion of the fourth floor smoking area to include gaming, and the creation of The Rooftop, a new bar and dining space, on the fifth floor.
More information: Hippodrome Casino
if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.
Tom Stoppard
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