Bruce Anderson

Game show

A French professor, a magnificent game pie, and a former High Commissioner of Australia

A few years ago, a distinguished cove in the diplomatic service was made High Commissioner to Australia. To prepare himself for the penal colony, he invited three predecessors to lunch, for advice. The first said that he should make contact with the Billabong institute in Sydney. They were experts on the transportees’ economy. The second advised him to befriend Ned Kelly, editor of the Convict Chronicle, who knew where the political bodies were buried, having often handled the shovel. Then it was Peter Carrington’s turn; Peter had held the post in the mid-1950s. ‘Watch out in late January,’ he warned. ‘When the shooting season ends, all your friends will try to invite themselves to stay.’

Peter is now the senior living former High Commissioner and also the senior living ex-minister. In October 1951, he was shooting at Ditchley, just after the election that brought Churchill back to power. At lunchtime, an aged retainer arrived on an equally aged bicycle. Its wicker basket held a telegram; would Lord Carrington tele-phone 10 Downing Street at his -earliest convenience? Assuming a hoax, his lordship waited until after the last drive. He was put straight through to the renewed PM. ‘Ah, young man; gather you’ve been shooting today?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Like to join my shoot?’

As the annual armistice descends on the countryside at the onset of February, one can find consolation without flying to Australia. Ed Lucas, one of the Odd Bottles, this column’s equivalent of the Pickwick Club, has a custom which both salutes the end of the season and fortifies its participants against the rigours of the fallow months. He commissions a game pie. Although it does not quite contain four and 20 blackbirds, it is a great chieftain of the em-pied race.

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