[caption id="attachment_3978" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The charming Earl Ferrers. The only man I have ever met with bigger hands than Iain Dale."]
[/caption]Hello. James Stephens here, filling in (badly) for Katy, who is no doubt up to something suicidally stupid in Palestine. You don't hear from me often. Mainly because I don't know the back end of a blog from a donkey's armpit. But also because I am terribly important and don't have time for all this new media stuff - as anyone who has witnessed my recent foray into twitter could testify. Anyway, the world doesn't stand still, and posts must be written - even if the master of the blog has taken an ill-timed holiday. In fact Katy's last words to me were: 'Make sure you and Hollie keep my seat warm, but don't to anything to upstage me.' Charming eh? Not really.
One man who does know all about charm is Robert Washington Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers, whose exellent book Whatever next? we were privileged to publish just recently. You may recall how Lord Ferrers charmed us all with his wit, elegance and flowing champagne at a recent book launch event here at Biteback Towers in May. More recently, he took a break from charming his fellow peers at the House of Lords, to turn on the charm with the Daily Mail's Jane Fryer who went up to Ditchingham to interview him for Saturday's edition. She concludes that there aren't enough like his Lordship around anymore and declares herself "terribly grateful that people like Earl Ferrers still exist." Naturally, we agree - but don't take our word for it; read Jane Fryers highly entertaining piece here.