J D Wetherspoon is a pub company operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company was founded in 1979 by Tim Martin and is based in Watford. It operates the sub-brand of Lloyds No.1 bars, and 56 Wetherspoon hotels. Wetherspoon is known for converting unconventional premises, such as former cinemas and banks, into pubs. The company is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a 2004 sports comedy film written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, and Rip Torn. The film follows a group of unlikely misfits who enter a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament in the hopes of winning $50,000 to save their cherished local gym from being taken over by corporate health fitness chain Globo Gym.
Dunnes Stores is an Irish multinational retail chain that primarily sells food, clothes and household wares. It was founded by Ben Dunne in 1944. In addition to its main customer base in Ireland, the chain also has operations in Spain. The format of most of the chain's stores in Ireland involves a grocery supermarket operating alongside a clothing/textiles store, although some stores contain only textiles and some contain only a supermarket. The grocery side of the business does not operate outside of Ireland, save for a limited grocery range in the Spanish stores. The larger stores usually contain a café branded as either Café Sol or Dunnes Stores Café.
Bernard Dunne was an Irish businessman. Director of his family firm, Dunnes Stores, one of the largest chains of department stores in Ireland, he then owned a chain of fitness centres called Ben Dunne Gyms.
Thomas Griffin Dunne is an American actor, director and producer. He is known for portraying Jack Goodman in An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Paul Hackett in After Hours (1985), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Richard Patrick Dunne is an Irish former professional footballer and current television pundit for TNT Sports, who played as a centre-back. He made 431 Premier League appearances, including 253 for Manchester City.
Virgin Active is a chain of health clubs in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
In the Republic of Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
Planet Fitness, Inc. is an American franchisor and operator of fitness centers based in Hampton, New Hampshire. The company has around 2,400 clubs, making it one of the largest fitness club franchises by number of members and locations. The franchise has locations in the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, and Australia. It markets itself as a "Judgement Free Zone" that caters to novice and casual gym users.
LA Fitness is an American gym chain with over 600 clubs across the United States and Canada. The company was founded in 1984 and is based in Irvine, California.
Joseph John Dunne is an Irish football manager and former footballer.
Crunch Fitness is a U.S.-based brand of over 400 franchised and corporate owned fitness clubs located in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Costa Rica, and Australia. Founded by Doug Levine in 1989, its current Worldwide CEO is Jim Rowley.
Anytime Fitness Franchisor, LLC, doing business as Anytime Fitness, is an American franchise of 24 hour health and fitness clubs that is based in Woodbury, Minnesota, United States. The company operates over 5,000 franchised locations in 50 countries. In 2014, Anytime Fitness was named the top franchise of 2014 by Entrepreneur magazine.
Charles Dunne is a professional footballer who plays as a defender. He has previously played for Wycombe Wanderers, Staines Town, Blackpool, Crawley Town, Oldham Athletic, Motherwell and St Mirren.
PureGym Limited is a British chain of no-frills health clubs, headquartered in Leeds. It is Britain's largest gym chain by membership, with over 1,500,000 members registered to their gyms. PureGym also operate gyms in 8 more countries and have over 500 locations worldwide; the newest territory, the UAE, opened in 2022.
Conor Dunne is a retired road racing cyclist who rode professionally between 2014 and 2019 for the An Post–Chain Reaction, JLT–Condor, Aqua Blue Sport and Israel Cycling Academy teams. He competed as British in his early career before switching to Ireland, and was the 2018 Irish National Road Race champion.
The Gym Group is a chain of 24/7 no contract fitness clubs in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered Addiscombe Road in Croydon, London, England.
Susan Jean Silver is an American music manager and businesswoman, best known for managing Seattle rock bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees. Silver also owns the company Susan Silver Management, and co-owns the club The Crocodile in Seattle. Silver was named "the most powerful figure in local rock management" by The Seattle Times in 1991.
Margaret Heffernan is an Irish businesswoman. Having left school at 14 to join what became one of Ireland's largest retailers, Dunnes Stores, she became one of its two main shareholders in the early 1990s, and later its CEO.
