Eyes Front For A Full House

11th March 2005

Lord Laurence Olivier of Brighton chose that city when he was enobled because the Oyster Bars of Brighton were something he said he could smell on stage when a performance was going particularly well - no matter where in the country he was playing. He dubbed this olfactory phenomenon, "the sweet smell of success"

Well from now on, for me the sweet smell of success will be rump of lamb. Now, I realise this may sound a tad peculiar, if not a little Welsh, but rump of lamb was the plat du jour for lunch last Friday at the most recent Portcullis sensation; our "Whitehats@Whitehall" seminar. I didn't know that there was such a dish as rump of lamb and previously I would have thought that eating a lamb's rump was possibly illegal. On the grounds that most things that are truly pleasurable get banned in the end, I would order some yourself from the butcher before the government intervene and it becomes forbidden.

As you know, the weather last week was far from Springlike and on the night before the event the Evening Standard's front page headline, in letters four feet high, read: "Don't Go to Work". As if to compensate for Michael Fish dismissing the woman who said there was going to be a hurricane, they predicted Arctic weather on a scale that would have kept Sherpa Tensing indoors. They claimed that any boss who made staff go to work on Friday was immoral and just plain cruel. I looked to the heavens as if to thank God for his warped sense of humour and wondered whether there was time to rename the seminar "Hardhats@Whitehall" and ring round our guests offering to sponsor them for Comic Relief if they managed to see the funny side of coming up to town in a blizzard. In the end I just decided to place my faith in the gutsy nature of our plucky delegates and hope that the old blitz spirit from the war was still alive and well. I need not have worried; the turn out on Friday morning was amazing. Some of these people had set off on their journey the previous week and they started to arrive over an hour before kick-off! The few who didn't make it managed to phone or text with their one good arm to explain that they were digging themselves out under four feet of snow but still hoped to make lunch. I instantly despatched our St. Bernard with some Kendal mint cake and a Portcullis brolly to show that we cared.

The morning coffee session in the River Room was packed to the gunnels by 10am as I called everyone in to the seminar suite. For readers of this column who were not invited - all twelve million of you - the event took place at Whitehall Court, a beautiful Thames side building in the French Renaissance style which is home to the National Liberal Club. Don't worry, all their members are the old fashioned Whig type Liberals and from a distance it's very hard to distinguish them from Tories.
The grandeur of high Victorian England is typified by this unique building; whose interiors take your breath away but whose exteriors take the Michael! Sadly a week or so before our event they covered the outside of this marvellous landmark with rusty old scaffolding and second hand tarpaulin. I had promised our guests unique views of the Thames and white tarpaulin was indeed unique but not in the way I'd intended. Never ones to be beaten by adversity, we quickly engaged a caricaturist to produce a panorama of the Thames in pen and ink to put in the windows with the Good Ship Portcullis sailing majestically past various famous buildings and our three Admiral Directors on the poop deck. A black tow rope disappeared out the left of the picture to be picked up in the next window pulling a oil drum raft with a few stowaways clinging to the wreckage one of which was a rather exaggerated fat version of yours truly!! This matter is now in the hands of my solicitors. So once again Portcullis establish themselves as the biggest patron of the arts since Charles the first!!

Keep watching this space for forthcoming events and keep praying that one day you'll receive the 24 carat gold invite from Portcullis in your in-tray.

Cheers folks!!

Clive Room - Marketing Manager to the Stars.