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Talk of the Bay

By Times Staff Writer
Published February 19, 2007

Diana's butler knows his wine, and sells it

One-time footman for Queen Elizabeth II, butler to Princess Diana and participant in assorted palace intrigues, Paul Burrell will not go away quietly. First came his spiller of the royal beans books A Royal Duty and The Way We Were: Remembering Diana, then a game show career highlighted by his eating bugs and kangaroo privates. Next came butler's advice books. On March 1, Burrell begins a series of seven appearances at Publix Super Markets in the Tampa Bay area for the U.S. retail launch of his Royal Butler Collection wines. It won't be that long a commute for Burrell, 48, who has a home in Clermont. His shiraz and chardonnay are made in Australia. Still to come: licensed lines of rugs, glass and dinnerware. Find his Florida appearances at paulburrellrvm.com.

Get your Roly Poly in Clearwater soon

Ready for yet even more sandwich wrap choices? They'll be rolling up 50 varieties of hot and cold wraps when Roly Poly opens the first of several planned Tampa Bay area locations in downtown Clearwater in mid March. And if that's not enough, the menu vault has 400 more choices in reserve. The chain of 170 stores in 27 states traces its roots to co-founder Linda Wolf, a native Texan who started stuffing flour tortilla shells in a Westport, Conn. shop in 1974, then teamed up to start Roly Poly in 1996 with Julie Reid, a former Key West Chart House manager. "On the West Coast they're called wraps. On the East Coast we always called them roll-ups," said Wolf, "I don't care as long as people like them."

Gators make Tampa company a champ

Video footage of Ohio State's football season is collecting dust on a shelf in Bluewater Media's office. It's a byproduct of the Tampa company's consulting role in production of the first of a series of college championship DVDs from Collegiate Images of Fort Lauderdale, StarGames of Boston and Hart Sharp Video of New York. National Champions: The Story of the 2006 Florida Gators had to be produced in 10 days to get it on store shelves within a few weeks of the Gators' victory over the Buckeyes, said Andy Latimer at Bluewater, which does TV production and multimedia projects. That meant a lot of advance work that didn't make the cut. However, the 60-minute video (available at www.gatorsdvd.com) was a piece of cake compared with the next project: a DVD on the NCAA men's basketball champion. The 64-team field almost guarantees a lot of last-minute scrambling. Unless, of course, the Gators repeat their feat.

[Last modified February 16, 2007, 22:45:33]