Prosopamnesiac triumph

To Lambeth palace, for the Archbishop’s lecture on press ethics: mine being judged in need of improvement.¹

This was followed by the sort of party when I find myself talking to someone who clearly knows who I am, and to whom I would clearly have a lot of old-friendly backchat to make, if only I could recognise their sodding face. This one was the first time that someone I don’t recognise has not just started talking on thebasis of familiarity, but grabbed me and said “Andrew! We haven’t kissed!”. Attractive woman talking to Jane Williams did exactly that. I cheerfully kissed her on both cheeks and was sucked into the conversation. Jane Williams made a joke about being completely unable to remember what we had said at the last bash, said that I had woken a few days later convinced that we’d been talking about worms. Oh well, she said, everyone was a little drunk at that party. Well, I wasn’t as drunk as Dr Vallely, I said. The pretty woman who had kissed me remonstrated, and at this point I recognised. She was Mrs Vallely, Christine Morgan, the woman who currently runs all the BBC’s religious broadcasting; and I had just made a joke about her husband’s being pissed to the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Anyway, about my career in print journalism …

¹ along with those of Ruth Gledhill, Mary Ann Sieghart, Andreas Whittam Smith, Jonathan Petre, Steve Bates, Austen Ivereigh, Christine Morgan, and, oddest, Theresa May, MP. It was notable that no editors felt their ethics needed improvement, not even the editor Church Times.