Peter White catches up with Simon Thomas as the Hippodrome Casino keeps innovating and evolving

Launched in 1900 as a circus theatre, transformed into the world’s most famous restaurant cabaret club featuring the biggest showbiz stars, then onto its latter days as a nightclub before eventually falling on hard times. It needed sparkle. It needed life. Casino Life was present at the birth of the Hippodrome Casino project as it emerged Phoenix-like from the rubble.

Simon, almost four years on from us wandering through the forest of scaffolding wearing hard hats and visualising elephants swimming in the orchestra pit, how do you feel about it now?