A happy encounter

Marylebone High Street is a thoroughfare where you pretty much know you will bump into someone.

Thus I always allow time for the chance encounter.

I had booked a table for myself at the Austrian restaurant Fischers for 6-30pm. Not having met anyone, as I approached the restaurant I was thirty minutes early for my reservation.

Then I was hailed from the pavement of a pub opposite by the journalist son of an old friend.

The journalist had worked for the Express where another old friend who passed away 3 years ago – Arthur Davidson – was editorial trustee and their head libel honcho.

Arthur had a full and successful career of which he talked little let alone boasted which included being a Labour MP from 1966 to 1983, rising to Shadow Attorney General, a QC, the doyen of libel lawyers, a director of Associated Newspapers (the then Daily Mail) and legal director of Mirror Group newspapers.

He was with Bob Maxwell two days before he died.  Even into his eighties he was “ legaling” for Time Out, The Voice and the Express.

Curiously there was no memorial service but a group of his journalist friends and colleagues regularly met in the haunts they had visited with Arthur, including Fischers, to keep his memory going.

So a happy 30 minutes  was spent cherishing a much loved and respected man.

He would be especially popular with his colleagues as he could spot a libel from five miles but then would ask “What do you want to say?’ and inevitably improve their copy.

He was devoid of any pomposity and enjoyed telling a story against himself – as in the time when, as shadow justice  minister, he inserted a draft provision in the Army Act making homosexuality compulsory.