I've done a little hobbing and nobbing in my time. Tonight's party for the birthday of "The Today Programme" was on a different scale.
Mark Ellen and I propped up the bar of the Royal Festival Hall's Skylon Lounge trying to work out which ones were the great and which ones merely the good. We decided the great are the ones with the bushy eyebrows.
An actual bishop engaged me in light banter after John Humphreys' speech. Geoffrey Howe still looks like a teddy bear. Ken Livingstone looks remarkably sleek. As does Norman Fowler. Charles Kennedy doesn't even accept a glass anymore for fear that people will start speculating about what's in it. Anna Ford is a fox - and she knows it. Floella Benjamin was there. And Desmond Lynam.
Why were Mark and I invited? "Opinion formers", apparently. Oh.
The big story on this morning's programme had been about the government's less than perfect grip on the numbers of foreign workers in the country. The tall, beautiful girls working the room with their bottles of wine and things on sticks were pretty much all East European.
Never has an elephant in a room been quite so attractive.
I always thought Howe looked slighly sinister and 'disreputable', but your absolutely right about Anna Ford. Oh, and it's 'Humphrys', not Humphreys, which is just typical of the awkward old sod (or possibly the reason for his contrariness - if you've spent your whole life correcting people on the spelling of your name it's bound to have an effect on the way you talk to them).
ReplyDeleteAll sounds very grand - no chocolate fountain then?
ReplyDeleteGeoffrey Howe is a Koala with Glasses, and on the same theme Norman La Mont is an Owl.
But Prince is a goat - from the waist down (long troos and heels to hide fluffy legs and cloven hoofs), but Charlie Chaplin from the waist up.
And David Gray is the John Major of rock.