‘After breakfasting at the Connaught Hotel in 1972, he was particularly proud when the head waiter shimmied up to inform him that he had eaten the biggest breakfast ever served, the previous record holder being King Farouk I of Egypt.’

Hugh Massingberd, gentleman, epicure, autodidact and laureate of the lately departed, remembered by friend and colleague, Craig Brown.

“Thirty four dollars!” the old man yelps. “That’s too expensive!”

Yet another vivid tale from the Faulkner of the four top @ waiterrant.net.

‘The complete list of my sexual conquests: 1994-95 – Anna; 1996 – Julia, Alison; 1997 – Italian girl at Karl’s party, Claire (Clare?), Jessica (fingered); 1998 – Anna again (big mistake), receptionist at my second temp job (possibly called Helena), Becky (I was in love but she went back to her boyfriend); 1999 – Jeremy’s girlfriend; 2000-01 – Karolina (deported); 2002 – woman at night club, woman at night club, woman at night club, woman at Stewart’s barbecue, Stewart (accidental coming together of groins, the three of us were naked and very, very drunk)…’

Excerpted from a personal ad in the London Review of Books, placed by ‘Man, 29′. Godspeed, sir.

“Einstein can’t be classed as witless,
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of splittiness:
Frightened everybody shitless.”

From the lyrics to There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards, by Ian Dury and Russell Hardy. (Released as B-side to Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Stiff Records, 1978).

‘He somehow secured my girlfriend’s phone number and left a tired and emotional message on her answering machine saying: “Reading your review was like being sprayed with hot shit. I hope you get some life-threatening disease very soon.” To this day, when we need cheering up, my friends and I gather round the tape recorder and play it just one more time.’

TV critic Jim Shelley recalls Richard E. Grant’s intemperate response to a negative review. From The Guardian G2, published March 12, 2008.

‘Tall, with an artificial tan that mummified his skin like cracked toffee, a mane of hair like brittle silver lamé and a smear of moustache, he latterly evoked Dracula lurking in the guise of an Oxford Street spiv.’

From the Telegraph obituary of prosperous pornographer, Paul Raymond.

It appears the book of remembrance for newsreader Carol Barnes, late of this parish, has ‘got out of hand’.