So much shrill Cape Town blogging rage has been directed at the outspoken Irishman who's taken over Bruce Robertson's elegant Showroom restaurant that it's even made the pages of the Irish Independent. "My mother nearly dropped her drawers when she saw it," Cormac Keane tells me with a wicked gleam.
Keane is new to restaurants and to Cape Town. His previous position was looking after the Moscow property of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.
Attie van Wyk
So I suspect banning customers whose behaviour annoys him could be a publicity ploy to get bums back on seats in this once celebrated venue, now called Portofino.But it wouldn't work if the food wasn't up to scratch, and his chef certainly gets it right. His open lasagne with wild mushrooms and goat's cheese is as sublime as his chocolate dessert trio.
My dining companion, Attie van Wyk, says he'll be back for more. He likes Portofino's location in the heart of the city, especially the spacious deck. Plus he goes back a long way with the Irish - to the days when, under the pseudonym Patrick O'Flynn, he played keyboard for an Irish band called Ballyhoo in Pretoria. They're still going strong 35 years later and Van Wyk (57) has become SA's foremost international live events promoter, with an annual turnover of R150m-R200m.
A BCom graduate who'd studied classical music at Pretoria's Conservatoire of Music, Van Wyk was with Ballyhoo for eight years. He left when record company Dephon approached him. "My first artist was a girl they'd found auditioning as a presenter for SABC. Yvonne Chaka Chaka. I wrote I'm in Love with a DJ' for her, we recorded it in an afternoon and it sold half a million." The 10 albums he went on to do with Chaka Chaka were generally multiple platinum, as were those with Steve Hofmeyr and Chicco.
Since the best way to sell records is to go on tour, he ended up launching his own sound-and-staging company. Ray Phiri of Stimela was one of the musicians he worked with, and when Paul Simon chose Phiri for the Graceland world tour, Phiri suggested Van Wyk to produce the SA leg.
That was his big international break. It was 1991. The cultural boycott was still in place. "It took three months negotiating with Mandela, Ramaphosa, Mbeki and Pik Botha. We finally had a party to celebrate, and at midnight Azapo's military wing bombed my offices."
The Graceland tour went on with limited ticket sales. Van Wyk lost R1,3m. "But you have to get back on the horse. So when Chris de Burgh's manager phoned, I bought 12 shows. We went on to do 21 sell-outs."
Since then Big Concerts has promoted almost 250 international performers - the likes of U2, Billy Joel, Sting, Robbie Williams, Michael Jackson and Phil Collins. This year's 200 events include crowd-pullers like Tom Jones, Elton John and Cliff Richard. In March it's the Shaolin Monks, and later in the year Mamma Mia again.
HOW HE CHILLS
 Every day at 4.15 pm he spends an hour at Virgin Active with his iPod, then goes home for a swim in his heated pool and a session in his Jacuzzi
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While other local promoters have come and gone - often in shame - Van Wyk has turned his company into a professionally run, multiheaded outfit. He does sports events, theatre, concerts and music festivals - sourcing talent, securing sponsorships, organising and promoting tours and shows, managing merchandising and liquor sales, and even doing corporate work abroad.
Recently he formed a strategic alliance with Live Nation, the world's biggest live events company, and he's been awarded a long-term management contract to upgrade the Bellville Velodrome to a 15 000 capacity venue by 2013.
He and his wife Isa live in Higgovale, Cape Town. After managing Big Concerts' tours for 16 years, Isa now has Isabelina décor franchises in Stellenbosch and Hermanus. One of their three sons is Big Concerts' chief financial officer.
Ranking the Analysts 2009
