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My wife and I had another night out (that’s the second since our son was born - what kind of irresponsible party animals are we?) in the posh environs of Old Billingsgate for the Scope Inspirations dinner. This is a vital fundraiser for this brilliant charity in which they entertain a room full of wealthy people in the hope of squeezing as much money out of them as possible (after plying them with wine). Thank goodness it works.
We were sat at table 22, which turned out to be where all the cool kids were. I was sitting next to children’s author Catherine Wilkins and concert pianist
Nicholas McCarthy something he admits might have seemed like an odd career choice as he was born with one arm. But when you’re determined to succeed you don’t let a little thing like that stand in your way and his performance was astonishing. You should definitely check him out if you get a chance.
I too had to do a little turn, which I was a bit worried about, as we’d arrived in town a bit early and had gone to the pub for a couple of drinks and I’d had a couple more drinks once we got there. I was supposed to be doing a mini-quiz based on my appearance on Mastermind, but it had all been put together a bit quickly. I thought host Clare Balding was going to be explaining it all and the running order I had been given said that people had to give £20 to play. But Clare vacated the stage once I arrived and it did not seem practical to wait half an hour for donations, so I just went ahead and played the game with everyone. Plus there was no real way to tell who had got questions right or wrong, so we relied on everyone being honest. But I ad-libbed my way through and luckily had come up with some questions of my own in case the 10 I had were not enough. Which mainly involved looking up Clare Balding on wikipedia. She claimed not to know that she was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, but I have never known wikipedia to be wrong.
It was a lot of fun to go out and get a bit drunk with some new people and to give money to a brilliant charity. It wasn’t quite as much fun getting home, but we managed not to fall asleep on the train and to test out local cab services. We were more than ready for bed.
But as we got out of I looked up at the cloudless sky and it was bejewelled with the stars you never see in London. So maybe the long trip home was worth it.
