Insane Usain impersonation

Lording it at Lords, the spiritual home of cricket on an idyllic day in St John’s Wood in London began with a couple of glasses of Veuve Clicquot as play started at 11am. Earlier we had journeyed into the far north of London, Camden to be exact, to do voice overs for Otway The Movie, the premiere of which will take place at the Odeon in Leicester Square on October 7th. Already 90% sold out, if you want to come and be a co-producer of the movie, buy a ticket now by clicking on the link. There will be an after show party. If you want to go, email me, I may be able to help.

That nice lady decorator and I have both known John Otway, writer of the book “Rock And Roll’s Greatest Failure” an autobiography, since the mid 1970’s so have a small contribution to make to this cinematographical masterpiece. And so then to Lords as guests of Adidas in their corporate box where we were watered with a continuous diet of champagne, wine, beer  and Pimms, and fed on sumptuous salads, duck, salmon, cakes, deserts and later even cucumber sandwiches. The weather remained fine throughout, a change from yesterday when, in a rainstorm, I took this picture of Nigel “Medina Palms” Rowley who was demonstrating the Usain Lighting Bolt pose, but clearly wanted to keep his champagne glass close to him whilst so doing. I think this was very wise.

Rowley makes a Bolt for it

Amongst the great and the good who were invited into the box, which held about 20 people, was Bradley Wiggins Adidas Agent and a gritty Australian called, rather inevitably, Shane, who was head coach of Team GB Cycling. I asked him if he had cycled to the ground and I am sure his retort “on your bike” was in jest. Actually a thoroughly nice approachable man, his only drawback seemed to be that as he was an Australian, our arch cricket rivals, he wanted to see England beaten by South Africa. I challenged him on this as how could he be so keen and work so hard to help secure England so many Olympic medals yet so want to see them beaten at cricket. He said it was his day off and anyway it was team GB, not England for whom he operated.

We then dashed back to Arundel for the start of the Arundel Festival. When I say dash I mean after 20 minutes of extended good-byes as that nice lady decorator does like a natter and doesn’t do “dash”, especially after a day drinking champagne. Boy can she talk. If there was an Olympic sport involving talking she would be a shoe in. She was paying such close attention to the cricket that as they players left the field at the close of play she suddenly asked what was happening. When I told her it was close of play and time to go, a wild-eyed frightened expression crossed her brow as she said “but my glass is empty, surely they haven’t stopped serving champagne?”. Indeed they had not, so she had one for the ditch.

On the way back on the train I was able to spend some quiet moments going through the business cards I had collected during the day and just whom could benefit from the opening of a Currencies Direct account. One particular South African sports agent could well be that lucky person. He was so delighted that he invited us to Cape Town next year. I think it would be rude not to accept.

Chris France