Deal done on hotel

HANS Torv, Hot Tomato radio el supremo, might well have celebrated with a cigar when he learned his three-year effort to sell Southport’s Courthouse Hotel had succeeded.

He had been out of contact for five days in Cuba when he was told that Asian buyers who had failed to settle a $3.7 million sale on time had resurfaced with the money, ahead of a quick-fire auction.

Hans and his sister Anna Mann paid $5 million for the hotel in 2005 and sold off the hotel’s pokie licences.