Taking Olympic history to Manchester

To Manchester for an address to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for the Kilburn Lecture on ‘The Future of the Olympic Games’. The learned society is Britain’s second oldest, after the Royal Society, having been instituted in 1781. John Dalton, the father of modern chemistry, was one of its important past members. My NBF Peter Barnes (I had to explain to him that the acronym meant new best friend) picked me up at the airport and whisked me to Manchester Metropolitan University, and within 45 minutes I had changed into evening clothes and was facing a jolly gathering of bearded professors, smiling ladies and an all-round appreciative audience who laughed at my jokes and were extremely generous with their applause. I spoke for 45 minutes and had an intelligent question and answer period of 15 minutes — one gentleman asked me why Lindsay Lohan hadn’t come with me, and I told him that, alas, she was most likely in jail and incapable of travel.

A lively dinner followed and the wine flowed, as did the vodka later on in the university’s bar. Oh, I almost forgot. A three quarters of an hour speech is quite long, and although I had six months to prepare it, I had only begun to write it down three days before. But I knew my subject by heart and, after a few fervent prayers, I was pretty certain I’d somehow wing it. What also helped were two double whiskys just before going up on the podium. One more double would have meant disaster with a capital D, a single double would have meant close but no cigar. But as I said, the society’s members were very friendly, many of them are Spectator readers, and one gentleman even knew about my ships and those of my father.