What the Sunday papers say

The Mail on Sunday

• Spirit Group, the UK's largest managed pub group, is looking for a property company to buy 300 of its pubs in a sale-and-leaseback deal. One of Spirit's main backers, Blackstone, is keen to float the business. Click here to read more on thePublican.com.

The Observer​

• Karan Bilimoria, the man who brought Cobra beer to Indian restaurants in Britain, is taking the lager back to the land of his birth, India. He, like many, is convinced that India is on the cusp of a lager revolution.

The Pret a Manger sandwich chain is to open a string of 'lounge-style' restaurants with leather sofas and low tables.

Some doctors believe young men and women will increasingly suffer from gout, the disease once associated with upper-class excess, because they are drinking more alcohol and leading excessive, unhealthy lifestyles.

The Sunday Times​

• Britain's hard-living ladettes have chalked up a new and unwelcome victory in the battle for sexual equality - women are now more likely to binge-drink than men. According to research from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, 18 per cent of women aged between 20 and 60 are binge drinkers compared with 15 per cent of men.

Britain is set for a two-year boom that will require the Bank of England to raise base rates to five per cent, according to the latest Ernst & Young Item Club forecast, to be published this week.

Council tax has jumped 60 per cent under Labour. Is it the system or are Britain's local bureaucrats out of control? In Hull recently a councillor jokingly asked how much it would cost to change a light bulb. The official answer was £50, though the bulb was only 35p, because of all the paperwork and people involved.

Gordon Brown will be given two blunt warnings this week that he will have to raise taxes to meet his own "golden rule" of economic prudence.

Britain's first high street store dedicated to followers of the Atkins diet has opened in Southampton. Nigel Fisher, the director of Carbless Foods, got the idea for the shop after visiting California.

The Independent on Sunday​

• After 39 years, the Pipesmoker of the Year award is to be extinguished because its organisers feared it fell foul of new laws on tobacco promotion. Former winners include Harold Wilson, Stephen Fry, Henry Cooper and Tony Benn.

Sir Brian Stewart, the former head of Scottish & Newcastle, is to make his mark at Standard Life, the troubled insurer, where he is chairman.

Heston Blumenthal cooks in a tiny kitchen for a few people at a time at The Fat Duck in the Berkshire village of Bray. Now he has joined Gordon Ramsay and Michel Roux as a holder of three Michelin stars. There are worries that the acclaim will spoil the master of molecular gastronomy. "He is far more than a wacky boffin," gushes the Independent. "His skill with honing and combining flavours borders on genius."

The Sunday Telegraph​

• Robert Tchenguiz, the property entrepreneur, and Entertainment Group, the film distributor, are close to buying out WestLB's stake in the Odeon cinema chain in a deal valued at up to £300m. Mr Tchenguiz recently made £60m on the sale of Pubmaster to Punch.

The Business​

No industry-related news.