So because of all that going downstairs with the Bolivarmania, it was almost impossible to get to the lifts to take me to the Lynch party. It was crowded and warm in the eighth floor pavilion as the speeches started, with Lynch’s nervous successor Alan Bishop finding himself having to ’stand on a giant’s shoulders’, and ‘with great humidity’ take over from him. Alan Davey, now head of ACE but back in 2002 doing his first duty as the new DCMS head of culture in interviewing Lynch, said he knew ‘he was the one’ because of the way he’d noticed him walking along the street swinging the cane he has to carry, and even dropping it a couple of times. And then Michael himself relating how he had been warned by the lady he was staying with as he left for the interview that demonstrators were threatening to attack anyone wearing a tie, and having visions of himself, as he crossed Blackfriars Bridge, being found hanging under it by his neckwear as ‘God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi had done. He had words of praise for colleagues, but none more glowing than for Kenelm Robert, the head of customer relations at the RFH, who got an MBE at New Year but whose much greater accolade was to be dubbed ‘a really nice bloke’ by the boss. Not a good bloke was the Standard’s Norman Lebrecht who had been offended by the number of Australians getting top arts jobs here, and called for them to be sent back. ‘I see he’s not here’ said Lynch peering over our heads. ‘That’ll because I didn’t ask him’.