Tuesday 13 November 2007

Dinner with Olly & Pub Review

Last night I met my uni friend Olly for dinner and drinks. Unlike me Olly has actually used his Politics degree; he used to be Charles Kennedy's assistant press secretary and now works for a lobbyist / consultancy firm. While working for Charles Kennedy he helped me fill one of my life long ambitions and took me on a tour of the Palace of Westminster. I'm fascinated by politics and the inner workings of our governments decision making process, so Olly is a great person to know.

He's recently appeared on Doughty St TV an number of times and has written articles for the Guardian Unlimited. He's thinking of starting his own blog which I can't wait for.

We had a very pleasant couple of beers and some Thai food in The Ring public house opposite Southwark tube station. Very pleasant and reasonable too.


This was Olly's take on the evening. See Olly I did upgrade you from a comment on my Theatre of Wine Review:
Since Rich is probably busy leveraging some multi squillion interest rate transfer deal I thought it apposite for me to briefly update the reader’s of Richard Elliot’s blog of his movements over the last 24 hours – specifically last night.

Having not seen the old bean for about 18 months I’m amazed how little he changes (I think Richard will still have those rosy red boyish looks for the rest of his life, as the rest of us all get increasingly wrinkly, infirm and decrepit). In fact I had agreed to meet him outside the Bodyshop in Waterloo – just because whenever I go home back to Surrey, my mother will often ask me to buy her some ‘body butter’ en route so it’s seems an obvious place to meet. However, it now dawns on me that it could explain the radiant, shimmering glow of Mr Elliot’s fair skin when I met him – either that or the fact that I was 15 minutes late and it was about -20 in Waterloo station.

Given his Molotov-cocktail, Ivy lifestyle in the City I shan’t pretend I wasn’t a smidgen disappointed that he didn’t whisk me off to the Savoy for some electric tea and then onto the Wolsey for the a la carte. But having made him wait in Waterloo in sub zero temperatures and having only a daft pink pashmina to keep me warm, I think we were both relived just to thaw out - which we did at The Ring on Blackfriars Rd.

And so I will hand over to Rich and let him fill you in on his suave attempts to chat up the bargirl in Thai and his Damascene conversion to the Lib Dems and proclamation of loyalty to the Rt Hon Vince Cable MP (one of these might be a fabrication).

I will now spend the rest of the day waiting to see if this comment remains relegated to a string on another story or if Rich lets me share the limelight on his blog by elevating it to a co-posting as a main story.

The blogging world waits with bated breath…

5 comments:

  1. my god. you can read the economist online. my life is now totally complete.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ok. i'm responding to my own posting (twice). i think i am scraping the blogging barrel.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Richard, you say you are fascinated by politics, but you are hard to engage in a political discussion!

    Can see you switching to the Yellows, even if they do have the occasional good idea...

    ReplyDelete
  4. By the way, which is Huhne and which is Clegg? One was on telly the other day and I liked him but which was it?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Olly - if the Economist online can make you live totally complete you must have been pretty fulfilled already!

    Ed - it is the decision making process that shapes policies that interests me, not necessarily the policy outcomes themselves. That plus the fact I don't like getting into political arguments with friends!

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.