- The Observer, Sunday January 20 2002
Now singer Britney Spears has forged an unlikely culinary partnership with Marco-Pierre White by investing in Planet Hollywood, the international restaurant chain.
The pair celebrated their investment last Thursday night with a meal at the central London venue, where White has already made changes to the menu.
Spears is a long-term devotee of the celebrity-backed chain on both sides of the Atlantic. She rounded off her 2000 UK tour with a party at the London restaurant - the guests included Alastair Campbell, then the Prime Minister's aide, who is a self-confessed Britney fan.
A famously frugal eater, Spears will not be involved in running the restaurants.
Planet Hollywood has had a chequered history since the original backers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, invested in it.
They made a paper profit of $50 million when the chain began trading on the Nasdaq exchange in 1996. At one point, it was valued at $2 billion. The chain owned 87 outlets around the world, led by flagships in New York and London, and 28 celebrities owned 15 per cent of the company between them.
By 1998, Planet Hollywood had reported a net loss of $200m. In October 1999 it filed for bankruptcy protection. It faced bankruptcy again last October and was saved by a $30m cash injection.
