Shamed Huw Edwards' divorce delayed as he's forced to slash £750k from asking price for his family home
His TV producer wife Vicky Flind filed for divorce days after he admitted possessing indecent images of children.
Their six-bedroom detached mansion in Dulwich, south London was then put up for sale for £4.75 million last October following the couple's split.
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But no buyers have come forward to take on the plush property amid fears it has been blighted by its links to the telly paedo.
The property has attracted so little interest that online site Zoopla is still urging 'be one of the first to view' - nine months after it went on sale.
Agents reduced its asking price by £250,000 in February - but a further £500,000 has now been hacked off as the couple attempt to accelerate their split.
The couple bought the six-bedroom home for £1.85 million in 2006 and it is mortgage-free - and 63-year-old Edwards expected to rake in more than £2 million from his share of the sale.
But the plummeting price means the presenter - who earned £475,000 at the peak of his career - has already lost more than £300,000 he hoped to rake in last year.
He did not pay back £200,000 in wages funded by licence payers which he earned between his arrest over child sex charges and his resignation.
Court records obtained by The Sun confirm that no decree absolute had been granted to end his 32-year marriage up to June 5.
It was unclear whether property sale problems were affecting the divorce - which had been expected to have been finalised by February this year
Edwards, 62, pleaded guilty in September to three charges of making indecent images of children and was given a six-month suspended jail term.
The material included abuse videos of children as young as seven, which he received via WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021.
Ms Flind initially stood by her husband but asked him to leave the family home after his arrest.
He has since been living between a flat in Wandsworth, south-west London, and a property in Carmarthen, Wales.
His Dulwich home is described by the estate agent as 'a substantial detached mid-century family house' with 'exceptionally spacious living accommodation'.
It features three bathrooms, three reception rooms, a library, an office, a double-length garage, and mature gardens with decking.
The agency said it sits 'on one of Dulwich's most desirable residential roads'.
The couple, who married in 1993, have three sons and two daughters.
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The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Inside the special relationship between JD Vance and ‘bosh' king Tom Skinner
He made a name for himself peddling pillows with all the gusto of a modern-day Del Boy: the 'absolute guv'nor' of 'graft' who belts out 'Bosh!' like a battle cry and has somehow made the way he pours gravy a key element of his persona. This is Thomas, or Tom Skinner, or 'The Original Bosh' as he calls himself, a Very British Businessman who found fame on The Apprentice – and just a few years later, improbably (or not, as it may be) finds himself sharing beers with the vice-president of the United States, and at the centre of a burgeoning class culture war. This week, 34-year-old Skinner is facing a wave of criticism over that meeting and his latest career turn. The circulating image of the latter created somewhat of a storm – Skinner, wearing a suit and his famous grin, leaning over a much more casually attired JD Vance, both awkwardly giving a thumbs up. Writing on social media, Skinner said: 'When the vice president of the USA invites ya for a BBQ [and] beers, you say yes. Unreal night with JD and his friends n family. He was a proper gent. Lots of laughs and some fantastic food. A brilliant night, one to tell the grandkids about, mate. Bosh.' Within hours, the photo of the unlikely diplomatic exchange was ricocheting across social media, accumulating tens of thousands of likes. The meeting – at a 'booze-fuelled' summer barbecue in the Cotswolds – took place during Vance's English holiday, in the same week he met Reform UK leader Nigel Farage for breakfast. The pair bonded in recent weeks after Vance sent him a supportive meme on X and their online friendship culminated in the invitation to the event with the vice-president. The question is, why would Donald Trump's right-hand man have any interest in being seen with Skinner, a perennially tanned, former market trader from Romford, Essex? For the same reason that the BBC announced him as an upcoming contestant on this year's Strictly Come Dancing. Since he made a big impression on viewers of The Apprentice in 2019, Skinner has traded on his 'man of the people', plain-talking, working-class image and, unsurprisingly, it's made him extremely popular. For the right, it has been political gold dust. Skinner is the supposed embodiment of the ordinary British families – no airs, no graces, just so-called authenticity and greasy fry-ups. His relatability has amassed him more than 700,000 followers on Instagram, just over half a million on TikTok and a similar figure on X. Across his platforms, you'll find him posing with 'proper English grub' like pies at the pub or toad in the hole, which he pours gravy over, making sure not to look at the plate as he does so – a trademark of his, albeit quite a baffling one. His pride and joy is his Ford Transit van; his brand, a nostalgic celebration of British culture, family, land, and hard graft, pitched as the mirror image of 'ordinary working voters'. Except, 'ordinary working voter', in 2025, has shifted significantly in meaning – and so now, apparently, has Skinner's politics. His brand draws heavily on a certain kind of working-class masculinity: entrepreneurial, salt-of-the-earth, no-nonsense, 'honest' people 'left behind' by modern Britain. The sort of people who hate being told what to do, especially by middle-class politicians they can't relate to. 'We need leadership that understands the streets, the markets, the working class,' he wrote recently on X, in a post that caught the eye of those noting his recent, subtle shift. 'People like me.' However, despite his white-man-van persona, Skinner attended the prestigious Brentwood School, which carries day fees of £29,112 per year, or boarding fees of £56,358 on a sports scholarship and grew up in relative affluence in a house worth more than £2.5m. His father, Lee, was a 'mega-rich marketing boss and businessman who was once able to have a garage full of Lamborghinis' (before being bankrupted over his role in a suspected investment fraud). This part of Skinner's life, however, doesn't fit into a carefully crafted rags-to-riches narrative. According to readers, his book, Graft: How to Smash Life, glossed over much of his childhood. So how authentic is the 'hard-working' hero his marketing suggests? Certainly, cosplaying in a working-class identity is hardly new nor rare, particularly on the political right, but rather a strategic decision. From financier Nigel Farage's well-worn pub pint pics to trust-fund Trump's blue-collar bravado, the trick is more than familiar: adopt the aesthetics and language of a class you do not belong to, then trade on the credibility and, particularly when it comes to working classness, the protection from criticism that it grants you. For Skinner – who openly showed support for Donald Trump last year and has said he'd like to run for mayor of London – the point is that the spin he's put on his background offers hope, or some sort of proof that happiness and success can come from true grit alone if you just have the right attitude, no matter how much society shows you that simply isn't the case. The Conservative Party, following Reform UK's lead, have taken the idea very seriously. And it's Tory MPs who have acted as Skinner's gateway to his latest association in US politics. Vance was not Skinner's first political collaboration – that was with shadow chancellor Robert Jenrick. The politician, who also had his meeting with Vance this week, once filmed a pretty excruciating video with Skinner in which he claimed that 'tool theft' among tradesmen was high on his political agenda. They were reportedly introduced by James Orr, associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge – the man who spotted Skinner's potential to 'speak human', as he puts it. 'I guess the way I look at it is kind of in the same way organisations have secret agents,' says Dr Mikey Biddlestone, of the University of Kent. 'Where they pinpoint and target the nerdy scientist who's the perfect person to groom into helping with their mission. 'They're hijacking this brand that already exists to be a mouthpiece for the content that they want to spread, to the demographic they want to reach.' Agreements with influencers are valuable, according to Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, because of a 'fantasy industrial complex', an imaginary world, or closed loop between politicians, influencers and audiences in which reality is less important than emotional recognition (or facts, Biddlestone adds). The mechanics are simple: Skinner's cheerful posts and 'everyman' appeal draw eyeballs; the algorithm rewards the content with further reach; the association between the two men and, crucially, what they stand for, quietly settles into the minds of their shared audience. And yet not a single policy point has been uttered publicly between them. The danger lies in what comes next or, as Biddlestone describes, the likely 'mission creep' that ensues in partnerships like this one. 'Like an insidious push towards an extreme idea,' he explains, 'where you introduce very small amounts of changes in perspective or messaging. And then it's a bit like that frog in boiling water analogy – before you know it, you've been nudged into an extremist right-wing perspective.' And who's going to argue with the guy who got famous simply by saying that hard work and family values matter? Skinner might have avoided being overtly political so far, but he's certainly at least right-wing coded. More worryingly, he's also one carefully selected mouthpiece in a much broader trend of political actors talking to influencers they see as being able to 'play' the working class for power. He might insist he's only interested in a hard day's graft and having a laugh, but already he's making very big political statements. The question is not just what Skinner will do with that, but how others might benefit from it. Bosh.
The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Beyond the Rave: How Gen X is saving clubland (and showing their kids what they're missing)
It was four in the afternoon, I walked into the club and actually felt a wave of euphoria wash over me with the lasers going and the music pumping and feeling the bass going through me,' James Davis, 54, recalls his first steps back into partying at Nineties club Strawberry Sundae's reunion event in 2023. 'Seeing everyone with their hands in the air, I was like, OK, this is great.' Davis has a critical eye. He used to be out four nights a week as Ministry magazine's club editor in the 19Nineties, then found himself deep in corporate life for companies like Vodafone and Samsung before heading out to Ibiza to run wellness retreats. After moving back to London post-Covid, he discovered all the old names – and all the old clubbers – were back. 'I know people who are really senior lawyers at big law firms, but secretly they go raving as well,' he explains. 'It's not even about reminding us of our youth, it's being back in that inclusive, happy culture. 'That's something that's missing in the modern world. Social media is very divisive and fracturing, but being in a real-life environment that's all about coming together, there's something very attractive about that to people.' Davis's experience is backed up by the reels on TikTok and Instagram showing archive footage from clubbing days when no one had phones and everyone was in it for the good time. And new research from Liverpool University shows that clubbers in their forties and fifties make up a significant part of the city's underground club culture. Sometimes the majority of those at underground events are now over forties. Liverpool's Richard Anderson, author of the Persistence of the Underground in Dance Music Scenes, researched clubs that were, he says, trying to create evenings where people could lose their inhibitions and be friendly in an unfriendly society. He was surprised to find how many of those who attended were Generation X. 'These clubbers have a limited aspiration to grow and become the biggest thing ever,' he explains. 'The intention is just having the best night, not to necessarily see the biggest name DJ. It could just be someone who's going to play the music that they like, whether that's music made 35 years ago, or 35 months ago, it really doesn't really matter.' Anderson's research covered businesses that weren't aimed at older clubbers specifically and he found dancefloors were happily mixed with younger and older clubbers alike. It's an experience borne out by some dedicated Generation Z clubbers too, who will happily share a space with clubbers their parents' age. 'In mainstream clubs like Academy in Leeds, you've got people in their twenties who are going more to hit on people than for the music, so you just get young clubbers,' says Leeds-based designer Tess Gladwell. 'But if you go somewhere more underground like Beaver Works or the White Hotel in Manchester, where they have good house, techno or jungle club nights there's a wider age range. People are going for the music, and the community not to snog some random.' open image in gallery Partygoers at a event ( Phil Marks ) A survey by Eventbrite in 2019 found that 3.7 million Britons over 45 went clubbing once a week. One promoter Phil Marks guesses that number has increased significantly since then. Marks, 57, worked in recruitment for 30 years, then sold his consultancy at the beginning of 2023. After years sitting at a desk, he looked around for a day rave to go to, couldn't find anything he liked, so he launched a one-off in July 2023 called 'It's like Studio 54 but we're open from 3pm to 8pm,' he explains – at a pub in Kings Cross. 'I thought I'd sell 20 tickets to some mates, but I sold 150 and filled the place up,' he recalls. His second party, at the Roxy in Soho, sold 350 tickets and last year he ran 40 parties across London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol at an average of 400 punters per party and he says the competition has exploded in the past two years. 'When I started in London, I was selling out maybe four parties ahead, but suddenly there are 15 club nights aimed at older clubbers in London alone and if you go to any major UK city, you will have between three and seven companies doing something similar.' isn't an underground event, he stresses, its Eighties and Nineties club classics but he knows people who've attended one of his events as a kind of gateway club and are now back clubbing all the time. 'The venues are happy to see us,' he explains, 'Youngsters don't drink anymore, so the clubs can't make any money. There were 36,000 clubs in the UK in the Eighties, and now there are fewer than 1,000. open image in gallery Fatboy Slim performing at a concert at Alexandra Palace in 2023 ( Getty ) 'One owner told me footfall is down 70 per cent and they end up having to do student nights with shots for a pound, so they're lucky to make £5 per head, but with our clubbers they do £25 a head easily.' The legendary DJ Fat Tony, who started out in the Eighties and has played clubs around the world, began his own day parties at the end of lockdown, DJing Saturday afternoons in a shop in Notting Hill Gate. His Full Fat day raves have been going for five years this summer, attracting 2,500 Gen Xers who come at midday, leave at 6pm and get home in time to put their kids to bed, as he puts it. 'I think that the demographics in clubbing have changed so dramatically because Generation Z choose not to drink, and pubs and bars and nightclubs are opening up to that older generation just to stay open,' he explains. 'Then they're thinking, 'Okay, we're not going to be judged anymore when we go out. We're not going to be looked at like we're the old age pensioners in the club.' When their children grow up, the nice parents from that culture want to take their kids out raving, and, dare I say it, give their children their first pill. That's rave culture. That's what they grew up on. I see it all the time.' The demand from older clubbers has been matched by the return of Nineties club nights like Peaches, God's Kitchen and Clockwork Orange. The latter was something of a pioneer in this, says Danny Gould, aka Danny Clockwork. The club started holding events in 2014 after years of silence following Gould quitting to get sober in 2001. 'I had years of drug-fuelled lunacy, until my brain just went – you have to stop,' he explains. 'When we reopened in Print Works, we sold 6,000 tickets in 20 minutes, finishing at 9pm and I'm in bed by 10pm. I'd say it's two-thirds an older crowd and a bunch of twentysomethings. open image in gallery Oasis crowds have been marked for the Nineties dads and lads vibe during their 2025 tour ( Getty ) 'Older clubbers have had jobs, lost jobs, their parents have died, their kids have grown up. They've got nothing to prove anymore, so everyone's respectful and just enjoying themselves. I think that's why the youngsters come – the positivity and the safety.' For Anderson, 'this is, in itself, explicitly political in that even if you're not thinking about it as a critique of modern society consciously, somebody said that the first time they went into a club, they couldn't believe everyone was nice, and they'd never experienced that before. It's a desire for tolerance.' We live in complex times, the UK is on its knees in so many ways, so it feels right to have a boom in dance music and dance culture – a place where you can just, for a few hours, forget about everything. And of course, this chimes with the Gen X way. 'We think of the Sixties as free love and psychedelics, but the majority of that generation were brought up in post-war austerity and were very sensible and got a job, stayed at the same company until they retired, and then got their pension,' says Davis. 'But Gen-Xers had that explosion of acid house music in the Eighties and Nineties and that gave us that inclusive, happy culture. Maybe that's something that's missing in the modern world. 'Social media is very divisive and very fracturing, but being in a real-life environment that's inclusive and all about coming together, I think there's something very attractive about that.' Marks has already opened a night in Amsterdam and had an Australian friend franchise in Brisbane. Clockwork Orange holds nights in Thailand, Dubai, Ibiza, 'and we're doing parties all over the world again,' says Gould. Even New York is succumbing. Jared Skolnick went to a few raves in Florida in the Nineties but then moved to the Big Apple and worked in tech marketing for years. In 2015, his spin class was promoting a festival where the Chemical Brothers played, and he rediscovered his taste for UK dance music. His next club night was Above & Beyond, the UK electro trio. 'This was one week before Donald Trump's 2016 election, so there was a lot of tension around politics,' he explains. 'The event was spiritual in a way I didn't expect. They put messages up on a screen, like – if you love someone, tell them now. And during this politically rife time, one of the messages was, 'look around you. You are also colourful.' I had this moment realising that we might have completely different beliefs, but right now we're all sharing something.' He now works clubs and festivals in harm reduction – testing drugs for the presence of fentanyl and helping people with bad trips. When I ask him why he thinks older clubbers on both sides of the pond are back clubbing like they were 30 years ago, he thinks for a second. 'In the US, Gen X is called the lost generation and I think these events are what we need to not be lost,' he gives a slow, sad smile. 'It's the idea that I feel like I belong somewhere. I think our generation, for a very long time, never felt like it belonged anywhere. Now I've found my place.' * Clockwork Orange is at the Steelyard, London, 6 September. See for details; Fat * Tony's Full Fat Season 9 starts at the Anthologist, London from 13 September. See for details; is at Popworld, Bristol on 27 September and touring through the winter. See for details
Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How the humble pizza conquered Britain
The sleepy town of Bushey, a stone's throw from Watford on the outer reaches of north-west London, is not the type of place you'd typically call a culinary hotspot. Yet on Bushey's innocuous high street, nestled alongside a hardware store, charity shop and dog-grooming parlour, sits one of Britain's most popular restaurants, attracting visitors from across the world. Vincenzo's, opened in 2022 by former teacher Tom Vincent, does not offer Michelin-starred fine dining, but rather the humble pizza. 'People come here from all over the world,' says Vincent. 'When we opened this shop, we were selling out in 30 seconds. That's 200 pizzas in 30 seconds. As much as we can fit in the oven, in the fridges and make with these hands.' Vincent, a self-proclaimed Americanophile, styled his tiny restaurant on the family-run pizzerias of New York. Its walls are adorned with paintings by Vincent himself, including one portrait of the fictional mob enforcer Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos. 'Eating all the pizzas there, I loved the culture,' he says. 'What I noticed was different [to Britain]. There were families, tradition, big characters – we hadn't got that here.' His small business has been lavished with praise from influencers, food writers and fellow chefs alike, and Vincent is now planning to open a larger, second restaurant in Shoreditch, east London. In the long run, he hopes to turn Vincenzo's into a group. However, he is not the only one harbouring such ambitions, as barely a week goes by without local headlines hailing the expansion of a new pizzeria in another town or village. 'We are in a very dynamic and very dog-eat-dog world at the moment when it comes to the pizza industry,' says Eric de Luca, operations director at Alley Cats, which runs two New York-style pizza sites in west London and is opening a third. This fierce competition highlights how Britain remains in the grip of a pizza phenomenon. In recent years, high streets have been flooded by pizzerias, offering everything from softer Neapolitan-style pizzas to larger Romano alternatives with thin, crispy bases. Popularity is such that the sale of sourdough-style pizzas has almost become a signifier of an area on the up. In Vincent's case, some commentators have credited him with pioneering a new approach, dubbing his pizzas 'London-style' owing to their American portion sizes combined with a European approach to toppings and ingredients. 'It's the journalists, food critics that have coined it, not us,' he insists. Amazingly, some of the pizza-makers receiving the highest acclaim don't even run their own restaurants. Crisp, one of the most feted pizza kitchens in London, is a bare-bones operation in a pub in Hammersmith, west London. Ace Pizza, a small but growing pizza business run by chef Rachel Jones, also started life in a boozer, over in Hackney, east London. 'You put good pizza in a struggling pub and the [drinks] sales go up, while it creates a home for the pizza-maker,' says Vincent. Some are even aspiring to push the boundaries of what pizza can be, in a move that will no doubt enrage traditional Italians devoted to the original. Michele Pascarella, the founder of Napoli on the Road, a restaurant in Chiswick, west London, that has repeatedly been named Europe's best pizzeria, is in the process of opening a site in Soho that will have a pizza-inspired tasting menu. 'We're going to play around making different kinds of dough, triple-cooked dough, fried, cooked in the oven – a lovely quality product and seasonal, the way you would [get] in a Michelin-star restaurant,' he says. It all speaks to Britain's modern obsession with what was once an Italian working-class staple, tracing its origins back centuries as a cheap and convenient meal. According to recent estimates, the average Briton consumes almost 6,000 slices in their lifetime, equivalent to more than 730 whole pizzas. Pizza Express alone sells 18.4 million per year. Its popularity outweighs traditional British dishes like fish and chips. Pizza is Britain's fourth-favourite dish to order when eating out, according to hospitality data firm CGA, behind only chicken, burgers and fries. Britons spent just under £3bn on pizza from restaurants and takeaways in the year to July, according to data from Worldpanel, and a further £1.4bn on frozen and chilled pizzas in supermarkets. Unsurprisingly, these flourishing sales have captured the attention of profit-hungry investors. Fulham Shore, the company behind sourdough pizza chain Franco Manca, was bought by the Japanese food giant Toridoll and investment firm Capdesia for £93m in 2023, while Pizza Pilgrims, which runs 20 sites across the UK, was acquired last week by the German chain L'Osteria for an undisclosed sum. Yet, this flurry of deals has sparked concerns that they are piling into the market too late. After years of rapid growth, sales in both the supermarkets and restaurants are slowing, having fallen compared to 2024. This has already led to larger chains like Pizza Hut and Papa Johns running into financial trouble, with the latter closing dozens of sites. In fact, pizza was the only type of fast food to post a drop in new store openings over the first half of 2025, according to data from hospitality industry analysts Meaningful Vision, falling by 0.6pc. 'What I see is brands growing, but at the expense of older brands failing,' says Simon Stenning, hospitality industry expert and director of Future Foodservice. 'I can't see significant growth in the consumption of pizza from where it is now.' At the same time, restaurants are battling soaring labour costs and higher taxes following Rachel Reeves's Budget, which has also led to fewer people eating out owing to cost of living concerns. This therefore raises the question: could Britain be approaching peak pizza? Humble origins The sheer variety of options available to British pizza lovers nowadays would have been unfathomable 60 years ago, when the young entrepreneur Peter Boizot opened the first Pizza Express on Wardour Street in Soho, central London. Boizot had just returned from a trip to Italy, finding inspiration in its vibrant food culture. His first restaurant was a modest affair, offering square slices of pizza cooked in an oven imported from Naples, sold through a hole in the wall and served in greaseproof paper with plastic cutlery. Simple it may have been, but it sparked a revolution that shapes how we eat out today. David Page, a former chief executive of Pizza Express, says pizza introduced post-war Britons to a kind of aspirational and accessible dining. Page, who joined Pizza Express as a dishwasher in 1973, says in the early days 'there were queues at lunch and queues at dinner, because, quite frankly, for 20 years, there was nothing else around', he says. 'You ate in pubs, but badly. There were fish-and-chip shops and greasy spoon cafes. There were posh hotels with restaurants, but that was very expensive.' At the same time, international air travel had become more affordable, giving people the chance to explore Europe and try pizza for the first time. 'People got to know sangria and tapas when they went to Spain, and they got to know pizza from Italy,' says Page. 'And there was a mass importation of ideas and people into the UK.' Page joined Pizza Express to supplement his income while he trained to become a teacher. However, he later abandoned a burgeoning career in the classroom when offered the chance to run a franchise restaurant. He rose through the ranks to become Pizza Express's chief executive in 1993, floating the company on the London Stock Exchange and growing it to around 300 sites alongside the well-known investors Luke Johnson and Hugh Osmond. 'It was incredibly exciting and satisfying,' says Johnson. 'We would go off to Leeds or Edinburgh or Dublin or wherever and bring something to the city that they hadn't really experienced before. 'We came with a degree of fanfare because by that time, the brand had a reputation. It was seen as new and – I know it sounds ridiculous in a way – but glamorous. 'It was relatively classless, which I think was part of its appeal, in that, you know, we had educated customers, people from different backgrounds, it didn't matter.' Johnson sold his share in Pizza Express in 1999 and went on to found the Italian chain Strada. Page, meanwhile, left the company when it was taken private by private equity firm TDR Capital – best known today as the owners of struggling supermarket Asda – in 2003. He later went on to purchase the sourdough pizza business Franco Manca, which he also turned into a nationwide success. With Page at the helm, he launched an assault on his former employer by undercutting it on price and luring younger customers with fashionable sourdough bases. After achieving a personal fortune built on pizza, it is now ironic that Page first failed to see how he could make it a success outside of London. 'As a Londoner, I was very rude about the rest of the country ... Of course, I was completely wrong,' he says. 'When we opened on Banstead High Street [in Surrey], one of the customers wrote to me and said it was the most exciting thing that had happened since the Germans destroyed the library in 1942.' Pizza Express wasn't the only company to bring pizza to the UK. US chain Pizza Hut opened its first site in Britain in 1973, while Domino's crossed the Atlantic in 1985. The latter's debut was a crucial milestone in popularising the pizza as a takeaway staple rather than just something to be eaten in a restaurant. 'There were three big pizza businesses – Pizzaland, Pizza Hut and Deep Pan Pizza – all of which were much bigger than Pizza Express in 1993 when we took control of it,' says Johnson. However, it was arguably the first to properly win over the middle classes. 'It raised expectations of what pizza should be like,' he adds. 'We had a proper wine list and decent coffee. And overall, it was a more sophisticated experience than pizzerias had been before.' As Pizza Express expanded, a flood of rival brands such as Ask, Bella Italia and Zizzi entered the market. By the turn of the millennium, private equity firms were ploughing millions into mid-market chains, heralding the beginning of a casual-dining boom that changed the face of British high streets. 'The food scene in Britain had been seen as unsophisticated and not very cosmopolitan,' says Johnson. 'Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, London became one of the great dining-out locations in the world, and Pizza Express was part of that transformation.' It didn't last forever. During the latter years of the 2010s, consumers began to lose interest in cookie-cutter brands, with many chains creaking under the weight of heavy debts incurred by ambitious expansion plans. In 2018, both Strada and Prezzo were forced to close swathes of sites, while a year later Pizza Express posted a £350m loss amid pressures from a £1.1bn debt pile. When the pandemic hit, Pizza Express was plunged into crisis and forced to negotiate a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) with creditors that saw 73 sites close with more than 1,000 job losses. Since the pandemic, things have remained tough for hospitality. Soaring inflation pushed up the price of fuel and ingredients to excessive levels, while the cost of living crisis caused customers to cut back. While inflation has since fallen, restaurants are now having to deal with rises in National Insurance (NI) and the minimum wage. 'The economics have changed in a bad way, such that any restaurant business – whether it's a full-service, sit-down bistro or a pizzeria – is going to feel increased expenses,' says Johnson. The impact of Reeves's tax raid is already being felt, compounded by food inflation hitting 4.5pc in June. Figures from the Office for National Statistics in July revealed the loss of 69,000 jobs in the hospitality sector since the Chancellor's Budget. Paula MacKenzie, the chief executive of Pizza Express, says the NI rises 'caught us all on the hoof', meaning the company is now looking to cut costs and become more efficient. Other big pizza brands are also sounding the alarm. Domino's, the UK's biggest pizza company, warned it faces a 'tougher' takeaway market as it posted a drop in profits earlier in August. 'There's no getting away from the fact that the market has become tougher both for us and our franchisees, and that's meant that the positive performance across the first four months didn't continue into May and June,' Andrew Rennie, its chief executive, recently told investors. 'Given weaker consumer confidence, increased employment costs and uncertainty ahead of the autumn statement, franchisees are taking a more cautious approach to store openings for the time being.' Sector-wide challenges nearly led to the collapse of Pizza Hut's UK business earlier this year, which was only averted following a pre-pack rescue deal with the investment firm Directional Capital. Meanwhile, the UK arm of Papa Johns recently revealed a £21.8m loss in 2024, which prompted the closure of more than 70 sites. A Papa Johns spokesman says these are 'not new developments' and took place over two years as part of a review of the business, insisting it is 'profitable when excluding restructuring costs'. Whether these cases are a reflection on the popularity of pizza itself, though, is up for debate. After all, while total pizza sales have fallen in the last year, they are still significantly higher than in 2022 and 2023. Johnson thinks it has more to do with weakness in the delivery market than any significant drop in demand. 'I think delivery has probably peaked in some respects, and has become pretty expensive once you add on all the costs,' he says. 'And although pizza carries pretty well as a delivery product, it's never going to be as good as the one where you can see in the oven being cooked. I also happen to think that the delivered products from those brands are simply not as good.' 'I've given up having pizza delivered because it tends to arrive lukewarm,' adds David Milner, the chairman of the Italian food brand Crosta & Mollica, which sells chilled pizzas in supermarkets. With big chains struggling to grow, Vincent says people are seeking out more interesting and authentic pizzas and moving away from big chains. This is in a similar vein to the craft beer boom of the early 2010s, which saw small-batch, hoppy IPAs marketed as an exciting alternative to mainstream beers. 'When I was young, we'd go to Pizza Express, TGI Fridays and stuff like that, and people blindly supported chains because we thought that's what was cool,' he says. 'Since lockdown, people want to support local. And it's much cooler to be going to somewhere that's owned independently.' When it comes to making money, many business owners believe they have a slight advantage over competing cuisines thanks to the attractive returns available for their product. 'Margins in pizza are really good. That is a statement of fact,' says James Elliot, co-founder of Pizza Pilgrims. So much so that he claims Pizza Pilgrims has not had to compromise on quality despite the rising cost of ingredients, fuel and labour. 'In 14 years, we've never had to make a call and try and compromise,' he says. 'I was just in Naples last week and we made a decision this year to switch our tomatoes to a specific kind of San Marzano tomatoes, which cost the business about £100,000.' That is not to say that pizza is immune to inflation. 'Everybody has taken pricing or put prices up, but we haven't put them up as much as other people,' says MacKenzie. But with the price of a 12-inch pizza usually coming in below the £15 mark, 'it's still an attractive proposition at a time when everything's becoming more expensive', says Stenning. 'When you look at the cost of ingredients like beef, the cost of that has risen so dramatically. When you have something like pizza, where protein is low down on the list of ingredients, you've got scope to play,' he says. At Vincenzo's, 12-inch pizzas cost between £11 and £13, while his 18-inch pizzas cost from £19 to £23. 'Margins were very, very good during lockdown but everything's doubled in price since then,' adds Vincent, who sold pizzas through a hatch during the pandemic before going on to open his restaurant. 'Mozzarella, pizza boxes and tomatoes have all doubled in price. Some things have tripled. Margins are certainly not as good as they were, but they're still good.' Barney Howard, who runs Barney & The Pizza in Folkestone Harbour, Kent, alongside a sandwich company, says: 'Comparing it to the sandwich company where margins are awful, pizza is a lot better.' However, he adds, 'You can still make a loss-making pizza. Just because your food costs are low, because it is, it is still very, very tough to make money.' MacKenzie says demand for pizza has also kept up thanks to its broad appeal. 'At the end of the day, it is dough, passata, cheese, toppings, in an oven,' she says. According to Alley Cats' De Luca, the explanation for how pizza conquered Britain is equally as simple. 'We see pizza as a staple that everybody can relate to. It doesn't matter where you find yourself in the world, or what cuisine you like or don't like, pizza seems to be a common denominator.' Elliot agrees: 'If you're booking dinner for you and your six mates, pizza is always a pretty safe bet. 'It is such a democratic food. For £15, you can go and get the best pizza in the city. I can't then give you another £15 and you can go and get a pizza that's twice as good.'
