Whatever next? | Biteback Publishing

I love it when we hold events at Biteback Towers. It tends to turn our lives upside down. And usually very funny or strange things happen. Take this interlocution I had for example:

'Welcome!'
'How did you know my name was Malcolm?'
'Err, sorry, no I said welcome - but welcome, Malcolm!'

When something like that happens you never know whether you should have known his name was Malcolm, whether he thought you should have known his name was Malcolm, or of course, if his name was Malcolm at all. Who knows.

For the launch of Earl Ferrers' book, Whatever Next? we had the cream of the political crop within these four walls: Sir John Major, Lord Kenneth Baker, Baroness Knight, Lord Michael Howard, Lady Hussey, Lord Jeffrey Archer to name a few. When you work in a place chock full of political boffins everyone gets pretty excited.

On hearing that the Queen's Lady in Waiting, Lady Hussey, had arrived at the launch, Grant began running around in circles waving his hand about his face as if he were Mrs Bennett anticipating Mr Bingley's arrival. I, for one, was concerned about his nerves.

Then, disaster struck. A pasta stain on his collar! Grant, fortunately, only lives around the corner. He'd returned - before I'd realised he'd left - sweating profusely. I'd retired to a quiet corner for a moment before I did another 'top-up' round on the guests' drinks when he came running in:

'Where's the Lady in Waiting?!'
'Over there, what's wrong with you?'
'I just ran to my house to change my shirt.'
'You look ill.'
'SEVEN minutes! That's a record time, I haven't run that fast for ten years!'

And off he went after the Lady of his dreams. Grant is eighteen. That means the last time he ran that quickly, he was eight. Presumably he was running from someone who didn't think it was OK for him to be able to name everyone who was ever in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet before he'd hit double-figures.

I was left smouldering in my age-coma in the corner.

For everyone who came along last night - many thanks indeed! We hope you all had a lovely time, we certainly did: Lords, Ladies, champagne - what more can you ask for?

Whatever Next? by Earl Ferrers is available now, priced £25