Customers who express an interest in booze are discreetly guided to a telephone where they can phone up and ask for drink to be delivered to their tables.

A friend who ate there reports it took just minutes to deliver a big selection of beers and a bottle of wine to their table.

The management said yesterday that the booze was delivered by ''an outside company'' but only the general manager, who is on holiday, knew the name.

Just the ticket SOME brokers have been claiming that a relatively sophisticated bidding system would not work for share issues in Hong Kong.

Oh no? One stockbroker rang on Friday to point out that the exact same system is being used in the Action Jackson competition this paper is running with Cathay Pacific and Commercial Radio to raffle Michael Jackson tickets in Bangkok.

Spot of Botha LEADERSHIP magazine is one of those slick things which mysteriously appear from countries which have an image problem, in this case South Africa.

Like promotional magazines worldwide, it has a cover so glossy you could use it for deflecting a laser beam.

However, the words go where no promotional magazine has gone before.

One article on South Africa's atomic programme describes former president P.W. Botha as being near the top of ''the list of world leaders you wouldn't trust with their finger on the nuclear button''.

The editorial says white liberals ''have on occasion arrogated to themselves the right to speak for blacks, to ventriloquise for them''.

Another article looks at some predictions by the Government and the African National Congress on the turnout for the first multi-racial elections and says: ''Most of this is mere hype.'' Among the photographs are one of a man digging the grave for a farmer killed by sectional violence, and a mass vigil for Chris Hani, the assassinated general secretary of the ANC.

We like it, but suspect others will not follow. Don't hold your breath waiting for in-flight magazines with articles on the Andes air crash. Or hotel magazines with a big reminder on the cover: Don't forget to steal some towels.

Schily gesture EQUALLY eccentric is Scala, the German business magazine, which has an article this month on the relationship between Germans and bananas.

It said that when a German banana promoter drove up an autobahn with ''Banana Republic of Germany'' on a big sign on his roof he was arrested.

He was charged with ''wittingly and wilfully bringing the Federal Republic of Germany and its constitutional system into public disrepute.'' One other interesting factlet concerned the deeply symbolic act of opposition leader Otto Schily.

On the eve of the first parliamentary elections after reunification he ''silently raised a banana in front of the TV cameras to indicate that in his view the victorious party had wooed East German voters with the promise of Western abundance.'' Highland games THE up-and-coming destination for European nudists this summer is the Scottish Outdoor Club on Loch Lomond near Glasgow, according to The Sunday Times of London yesterday.

Usually, nudists prefer southern France, Italy and other hot places, but the thinning ozone layer is making fans of this type of holiday wary of the sun.

Another possibility is that since the pound crashed out of the exchange-rate mechanism last year, the UK has become a very cheap place for continental Europeans to take a holiday.

Who says the currency markets have no connection to real life? If currency traders can send nudists to freezing Scotland they can do anything.

Time is money A DEFINITE correlation has been drawn between your pay-packet and your longevity.

A Canadian study of 500,000 men found that those with higher earnings in their years between 45 and 64 lived longer after retirement than those who earned less.

But they don't know if this means that money prolongs your life, or whether healthier people tend to earn more.

Mind you, we imagine that for people who retire with no money, their last few years must seem like an awful long time.

Tour de force COMING to the territory in late December are the Beatnix, whose promoters, The Entertainment Company, describe them as ''one of the world premier Beatles impersonators''.

The promotional material states: ''We should also point out that all music is live and not mined.'' One potential hirer said: ''I'm pleased they're not going to explode on stage.''