MUD wrestling reared its mucky head at the latest M4 Business breakfast meeting when Wales Millennium Centre chief Judith Isherwood described the ways in which her former employer got it badly wrong.

Ms Isherwood was acting chief executive at the Sydney Opera House. She said: "For the first 25 years of its 30-year history the opera house hosted regular presenters and then took phone call bookings from anyone with a cheque book big enough to hire the space.

"This led to events such as mud wrestling. And while it may have made money, the damage it did to Sydney Opera House's reputation was incalculable."

She's determined that the same fate will not befall the Millennium Centre where "failure is not an option".

The pressure on Ms Isherwood to prevent the £106m "Armadillo" transforming itself into a white elephant is immense and this could be gauged from the fact that her talk was in large parts a sales pitch to drum up more business.

She has the unenviable task of having to sell 350,000 tickets a year for the main auditorium - The Donald Gordon Theatre.

Encouragingly, her hard-pressed box-office staff have already sold 110,000 so they're about one third of their way to safety.

This year's format will consist of nine per cent opera, 15 per cent ballet and contemporary dance, 54 per cent musicals and 22 per cent other.

As Ms Isherwood put it: "If the Donald Gordon doesn't work then the facilty won't work and the brand will be affected.

"We want excellence and we want big audiences."

The Millennium Centre has already drawn some spectacular reviews from journalists. Unfortunately they're all from distant capitals and the question remains as to how big a market there is in Wales for a citadel devoted to high culture.

Ms Isherwood cited a reporter from the New York Times who attended the opening last year and said: "Last month Wales was invisible, now it finally exists on the international map."

It was a contentious remark: for the majority of people who live outside the Ivory Tower of high culture Wales has been on the map for some time.

Ms Isherwood is expecting an annual turnover of around £13 million. This will be derived from ticket sales from the main auditorium, from the studio theatre and from rents accruing from retail, food and drinking lettings within the building.

A working village of 650 people will keep the project going seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

It's going to give Cardiff Bay a major economic boost, although for political correctness the emphasis is being put on the boost its going to give "Wales as a whole".

Its seven-and-a-half-acre site is half as big again as Sydney Opera House's five acres and it contains some unusual auxiliary facilities.

One of these is a 150-bed hostel for Urdd Gobaith Cymru to send its young members for cultural holidays in the capital. Ten thousand children per year are expected to make use of this.

Ms Isherwood said ticket prices for the opera are a lot cheaper than London venues such as the Royal Opera House. She believes this could lead to plenty of cultural tourism from London to Cardiff. Likewise overseas visitors are expected to make it a regular stop-off and have already accounted for four per cent of ticket sales.

She was a bit dismayed that the biggest question the local media can come up with is whether or not the project will fail.

She takes heart from the fact that during the first two months the box office, expected to field 800 calls a days, has been coping with 1,400 to 1,600.

"This is a springboard for launching Welsh culture on the world stage and part of my mission is to find Wales' voice for that stage."

She deserves to succeed, but if she doesn't there's always mud wrestling to fall back on.