Bunhill: Pie in the sky flies into trouble

SPENCER Trethewy was consulting m'learned friends again last week.

For those who need their memories jogging and do not read tabloid newspapers, Trethewy is the 22-year-old self-styled tycoon who tried and failed to save Aldershot Football Club, spent a period squatting in a pounds 4m house in Holland Park and was served with an injunction from Whitney Houston stopping him from saying he was her manager.

Now the mighty Cunard, owner of the QE2 and the Ritz Hotel, has moved against him.

On Friday, Cunard obtained an injunction preventing Trethewy from naming his latest venture, an air service from London to Barbados, Cunard Airways. Cunard is worried in case people think they are somehow related.

Trethewy hopes to get the injunction lifted tomorrow. 'We will fight them every step of the way,' he told me, between interruptions from his mobile phone. 'The businesses are clearly separate. I will get the injunction lifted.'

His confident assertion is based on research revealing two other companies called Cunard - Cunard Developments and Cunard Properties - which also have nothing to do with the QE2's owner.

'I have a company called Digital Development Corporation,' he says. 'And Digital (the computer giant) has not sued me for using the name.'

Cunard Airways plc was formed last month with a share capital of pounds 1.15m. The two directors are Spencer and his brother Elton, who lives in Edinburgh. The registered office is an accountancy firm in Golders Green, London.

If flights are to begin on time in December (Trethewy will use two rented Boeing 747-400s at more than pounds 2,000 an hour), he must obtain the permission of the Civil Aviation Authority and the Barbados government - and see off Cunard. Don't hold your breath.

(Photograph omitted)