“Please, we’re desperate…” I get so many telephone calls that start this way these days.
OK, so I have made that first bit up, but I did get a somewhat surprising phone call from Tim Connell a few weeks earlier, wondering whether I might like to be the “guest” speaker for the Gresham Society annual bash this year.
“Keep it to 10 minutes”, said Tim, a man who claims to bring the AGM business bit of the evening home in five to seven minutes, but pretty much never does.
This year the AGM bit ran to over 18 minutes. I know, because I set off my stopwatch at the start of the meeting.
Anyway, it is always good to see the Gresham Society gang and this year we were in the hallowed surroundings of the Guildhall, albeit the modern members wing. The last time I dined in that part of the Guildhall, after the meal, I started a brawl…
…while my most recent prior visit to Guildhall was nerve-wracking by dint of the occasion and costume I was required to wear…
…all of which made this Gresham Society event feel like a doddle by way of comparison. After all, I wasn’t required to sing or play a musical instrument – indeed Tim stipulated that I was required NOT to set my talk to music.
Darn.
But of course, in his attempt to maximise my discomfort, rather than populating the place with a Professor of Music or two, which Tim tends to do when I am making music…
…on this occasion, when I am to speak, he ensured I was sitting within chatting distance of the new Professor of Rhetoric, Melissa Lane.
Joking apart, it was a great pleasure to meet Melissa – indeed the company was all relaxed, interesting and convivial, as always at Gresham Society.
There were one or two false starts ahead of my talk, to ensure that all had their after dinner beverages and that temporarily absent friends were all accounted for.
Fortunately for all concerned, when I speak for “no more than 10 minutes” the resulting talk comes in at eight or nine minutes…
…although I started with my old “I thought I’d been asked to talk for 89 minutes” gag.
Anyway, above is an image of part of the talk, which was primarily about The Right Honourable, The Lord Mayor, Alderman Professor Mainelli, who might or might not be the first ever Gresham Professor to become Lord Mayor but he sure as hell is the first ever member of Gresham Society so to do and I can safely say the only business partner of mine who will ever do the Lord Mayor gig. Michael and I have worked together since we met in 1988
The audience laughed a good few times during my talk…one or two of those occasions being at times that I hoped would engender laughter. At the end of the talk, once the stony silence…I mean applause…had died down, Tim Connell presented me with a book as a gift.
One of the book’s authors, Graham Greenglass, I have known since I was a kid, through youth club stuff. I must have met Graham 10 years before I met Michael.
Good book, that Guildhall book of Graham’s. I have been enjoying rummaging in it.
Just as we were leaving the event, Bobbie Scully (another person I have known significantly longer than I have known Michael Mainelli) berated me for wearing a Jackson Pollock tie with a striped shirt. I wonder what she would have made of the Jackson Pollock shirt I wore a few days later:
It was, as always, a most pleasant evening in the company of friends at Gresham Society.
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