17 September 2025

Richard Coles, you owe me a gossipy lunch

Sometimes you just know someone isn’t going to show up at a restaurant

The spiritual ancestor of this column, Jeffrey Bernard’s “Low Life”, which appeared in this magazine’s Mirror Universe edition, the Spectator, used to be occasionally replaced in its entirety by the rubric: “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell.” For years, as a sweet summer child of 22 years or so, I would think: “Poor lamb. I do hope he recovers; for his column, and the book reviews, and Christopher Hitchens, and a couple of other things which are not right-wing batshittery, are what keep me reading this publication.” The excuse of unwellness became famous enough to be turned into the title of a play by Keith Waterhouse, which starred Peter O’Toole in its first run. I was privileged to be invited to the opening night.

Later on, when I grew older and wiser, it dawned on me gradually that “unwell” – until it began to really mean that – was actually a euphemism for “too pissed, hungover, or disinclined to file”.

Now, over the course of many years writing my own column here, I have many times felt disinclined to haul my carcase into a vaguely upright position and do the thing I am paid for. But, and my saintly editors will, however reluctantly, back me up on this, I have always, in the end, and however alarmingly late, delivered. Now I know – for I, too, have been an editor – that there is a Deadline, and a Real Deadline, and a Real Bloody Hell Deadline. There is even one past that which I will not name, for it is cursed; but I also know that not only is an editor’s patience finite, but that they really don’t mean ill; they are just trying to do their best for the publication. So it is only in one week out of every three, or possibly two, that I say “Um can I file tomorrow instead because of [reason].” And I have to say, in my defence, that [reason] is almost always true, and the only time I got badly caught out was when I said I was awfully poorly (I wasn’t) and ran into, in a literally 20,000-to-one-against coincidence – for that was the capacity of the ground then – Jason Cowley, Mr McTague’s predecessor, at Lord’s. Awks, as they hadn’t quite started saying in those days.

This week’s excuse was, I thought, rather a good one. Here is my email in full: “Groping for material and wasn’t coming up with much – BUT! I have just arranged to have an outrageously late lunch at the Regency with national trinket Richard Coles at 5pm, so perhaps I could write about that and file tomorrow am?”

I have known Richard for some years now; we were in a group of friends, now dispersed, who would meet every few months at the Academy Club in Soho and, well, gossip, mainly. People would take it in turns to pay for me. I would sing for my supper, my tongue perhaps loosened with wine, and supply, under Chatham House Rules, anecdotes about my fellow writers and myself with a certain candour. So when I heard that Richard was in town, I sent him a message suggesting a lunch. He said 5pm, as per the email above.

Richard is a little more discreet than me (most people are) and I was wondering how much of our conversation I would be able to report. We could both be damaged by my indiscretion here. And so could others. Our knowledge is contiguous but does not overlap; but between ourselves, we know where an enormous number of the bodies are buried. I thought: this is a problem I will sort out tomorrow morning, or at least before three in the afternoon, when my editor will start asking me where the hell my piece is.

I walked through a gale to get to the Regency but arrived there in good time, and ordered a glass of something to thaw me out. It was well I did not order a bottle. “Table for two,” I’d said, and although I frequently go there on my own when I am in funds, it is nice to go there accompanied, to give the impression that I actually do have some friends.

However, something didn’t feel right. Do you know how you sometimes just know someone isn’t going to show up at the restaurant? It’s like being in tune with the universe. So at 5.08pm, full of foreboding, I sent him a message saying “You did mean today, right?”I felt foolish for even asking, but still felt in my bones that something was up.

No, he replied, he meant Tuesday. A fact which, he conceded, he had failed to mention. This surprised me, for although he may have retired as a clergyman, a gig which stresses the importance of turning up to compline on time, he now does an awful lot of travelling, and that, too, demands rigorous punctuality. I sighed, ordered some oysters, sent him a photo of them saying “I’ve started without you”, and brooded on the quirk of this country’s constitution that allows certain of the Lords Spiritual to take seats in the Upper Chamber of the Houses of Parliament.

Well, it’s next Tuesday then. I will have recovered my poise. Richard, consumed by guilt, will doubtless fill me with lobster, and I will not complain. And also, this week, I have not broken the seal of the confessional. It’s win-win.

[See also: Robert Redford was the last simple beauty]