I know how Jonny Bairstow feels

A poor little Greek boy writing about cricket etiquette is like Harry Sussex lecturing on discretion, but never mind. As everyone but Joe Biden knows by now, Jonny Bairstow was given out recently during the second test match at Lord’s. For any of you out in Baja California who might have missed it, the Brit ducked a bouncer and left his crease, thinking the ball was dead. The Aussie keeper threw the ball at the stumps and all hell broke loose as Jonny was called out. For you American fans, the equivalent is a base runner being caught off base by a hidden ball trick, get it?

The brouhaha that followed was all about sportsmanship and the spirit of the game and all that. Which brought back memories. It was about 20 or 25 years ago, and the game was between Badminton House and the village. I was – natch – playing for the former. Imran Khan was on our side, with Jemima cheering us on, although the marriage was already on the rocks.

Like the good sport that he is, Imran was not trying hard but was advising me to be careful, as I was getting down like a baseball third baseman and throwing myself after every ball. I had also introduced a Hellenic touch to the game by shouting: ‘Thermopylae, nothing gets through.’ Not everyone found it amusing.

Finally I was the last man up to bat with three or four runs needed to win. After the first wide one, and unaware of the rule, I wandered away for no reason and the keeper did an Aussie and threw the ball at the stumps. The result? Badminton village won and Greek boy wore the fool’s hat. What is the moral of the story? If a Brit can do it at Badminton, why can’t an Aussie do likewise at Lord’s, and for much bigger stakes? What I also remember very well was that no one said anything about the spirit of cricket and me being thrown out for not knowing the rules and all that.

Never mind. Values such as decency and fairness are now as redundant as discretion on the part of royal princes, financial imperatives having made them superfluous. It might not be cricket but it sure makes financial sense to ‘cheat’, but the bum who threw me out a quarter of a century ago had no such enticement. It was automatic.

And speaking of doing the right or wrong thing, here’s my take on my friend Nigel Farage and the bank. Many, many years ago, Barbary pirates kidnapped an American with a Greek name, Perdicaris. Teddy Roosevelt was president of the US of A and sent the bad guys a simple message: ‘Perdicaris alive or [you] dead.’ The American was returned safely. Now, when was the last time a president or prime minister threatened to do real harm in defence of an individual citizen? And what does this have to do with Nigel?

Well, I was under the impression that British citizenship gave certain inalienable rights to a person, such as protection from sinister forces hell-bent on punishing an individual for his beliefs. Now I don’t expect Rishi to play Teddy the rough-rider, or even Winnie in Omdurman, but Nigel’s, the vicar’s and many others cases are outrageous. In Nigel’s case, a stooge makes a false claim under parliamentary protection and it’s then used to make a patriotic Englishman a non-person. What is this? Equatorial Guinea? What Rishi should do is threaten to have his wife withdraw her funds from banks that discriminate against Nigel and the vicar and the rest.

Everything’s hunky-dory otherwise and I returned to London for the annual Spectator and Lady Annabel Goldsmith parties. I went to the former early, before the crush, and managed in no time to down three vodkas on an empty stomach. Not advisable. I was driven to Annabel’s garden as darkness was falling, and Tessa Fane and Sabrina Stoppard took pity on me and sat me between them. Then I also got a kiss from the beautiful Sophie Windsor, fortunately unseen by her mother-in-law Marie-Christine.

The next day the greatest lunch in the history of the world took place at Bellamy’s, whose owner Gavin Rankin has put up a plaque commemorating the historic meeting. We were four: the poor little Greek boy, Timmy four-million-acres Hanbury, the Duke of Beaufort – Bunter to us Speccie regulars – and Dave Ker, whose direct ancestor sold the ‘Mona Lisa’ to the Louvre, and a sexual athlete without precedent, also the subject of a study by Professor Wolfshlegger of Zurich who was the first to discover the fact that Dave Ker has made love three times a day, every day, for the past 40 years. ‘For a sexologist,’ said the good professor to me, ‘Dave Ker is like America being discovered by Amerigo Vespucci.’ The professor is up for a Nobel Prize for his discovery of a sexual miracle like Dave Ker.

Everything after that was obviously an anti-climax, no pun intended, but drinks with Robin and Ben at 5 Hertford Street, lunch chez the Bismarcks, and the fitting memorial for Jeremy Clarke closed out a hell of a London week.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. I met Isabella, a very pretty young woman who mistook me for a 60-year-old.