Well, that went quite well.
The second Freedom Dinner at Boisdale of Canary Wharf attracted over 150 guests, two excellent speakers and a host of complimentary tweets including one or two that sounded a little rueful about the amount of alcohol consumed.
For example:
#freedomdinner What a great night out @boisdaleCW
#freedomdinner was definitely THE place to be last night.
Fantastic #FreedomDinner last night.
Such a great night with you all for #freedomdinner!!
#freedomdinner - fantastic night!
#freedomdinner loved it! :)
Just recovering from #freedomdinner last night at @boisdaleCW - great speeches from Lord Bell and @MarkJLittlewood
#FreedomDinner was bloody amazing, great fun, fine food and drink, brilliant sociable ppl.
Brilliant night at #freedomdinner
Freedom is not free. Suffering from #freedomdinner last night.
Great evening at the Freedom Dinner. Good food, good company & witty speeches by Lord Bell & Mark Littlewood
Great speeches from @MarkJLittlewood and Lord Bell at the @Forest_Smoking #freedomdinner
Good wine, food, cigars and lovers of freedom/opponents of Puritan groupthink at the Forest #FreedomDinner. We are not clones to be moulded!
And last but not least:
Thank you to @forest_smoking and @boisdaleCW for a fantastic/hilarious evening. Very rare evening in London so great to see so many friends.
The day started early because I'd been invited to Wimbledon with instructions to be there by 11.45 (for lunch), or 11.00 if I wanted a pre-lunch drink. (Decisions, decisions.)
A combination of food, drink and light rain meant we watched no more than 20 minutes' tennis on Court 1 before retreating to our corporate marquee for another drink or two.
Sadly I had to leave early to get to Canary Wharf for our own event.
By the time I got there – via taxi and Tube – guests had already started to arrive and were being directed to the smoking terrace overlooking Cabot Square.
If you've never been to Canary Wharf it's quite spectacular, very different to the rest of London. I love it.
I remember it when there was very little infrastructure. Today there are shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, more bars ... and Boisdale, which opened a restaurant there in 2011.
The weather on Tuesday was grey and overcast but warm enough to enjoy the smoking terrace. (In colder weather Boisdale has heaters and tartan blankets to keep customers warm.)
Like last year guests were offered a choice of champagne or Chivas Regal whisky cocktails. This time the whisky cocktails were less to my taste because they tasted rather strongly of, er, whisky.
Perhaps that was a blessing. Last year the taste of the whisky was masked by lemon and I had far too many. (That's all I will say.)
Anyway, with all the guests having arrived, including stragglers from Wimbledon, we sat down for dinner in the main restaurant. It took 15 minutes to get everyone seated but the alphabetical guest list and table plan seemed to work.
Co-host Ranald Macdonald, proprietor of Boisdale, had invited his parents, The Captain of Clanranald and Lady Jane of Clanranald.
Other guests included Christopher Chope MP, David Amess MP, and the Hon Christopher Gilmour (son of former Conservative minister Sir Ian Gilmour aka Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar).
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) had its own table. The Adam Smith Institute was represented, as was the TaxPayers' Alliance even though The Freedom Dinner coincided with the TPA's Summer Party.
Journalists rubbed shoulders with political researchers and advisors and there were also representatives from the worlds of food, drink and gambling.
Guests on the Forest table included Lord Bell, Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Mick Hume (former editor of Living Marxism and author of There Is No Such Thing As A Free Press), and Trevor Baylis OBE. A great friend of Forest who attends most of our events, Trevor is famous for having invented the clockwork radio. He's also a former Pipesmoker of the Year.
There were a couple of changes from the first Freedom Dinner in 2012. Last year we booked a brilliant band to play after dinner. However – and we should probably have anticipated this – most of our guests shot off to the smoking terrace as soon as the speeches were over leaving only a handful of people listening to the band.
This time we arranged for the band to play on stage during dinner, and play on the terrace after dinner.
And so to the speeches, the first by Mark Littlewood, director-general of the IEA, the second by Lord Bell, former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, FW de Clerk and many more.
We're going to publish Mark's speech online in the next day or two, but here's a flavour:
My Mum and Dad taught me the secret to a long and healthy life – and that’s why I never touched a cigarette, a drink or a girl until I was ten years old ...
I’m not a heavy drinker, I sometimes go for hours without a drop. And I have a firm rule never to smoke more than one cigarette at a time ...
I don’t take illegal drugs. I believe cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money.
And so on.
Likewise, we are going to transcribe Lord Bell's speech. In the meantime, I will direct you to this post on the Spectator website – Lord Bell savages ‘pygmy’ Cameron.
It's not strictly true. Cameron wasn't mentioned by name.
Lord Bell certainly had strong words to say about Blair but it wasn't entirely clear whether he was pulling our legs.
After dinner it was back to the smoking terrace for more drinks and live music.
Dan Donovan, his sound engineer Ben and I spent some time recording interviews with guests but – I'll be honest – I don't think everyone was entirely sober. Talk about verbosity!
I have instructed Dan to edit as best he can but we may have to abandon that part of the video. Less is more, as they say.
Thanks to everyone who supported The Freedom Dinner. It was great fun and we hope to see you again next year.
Update: Pat Nurse has written a nice piece for her blog - click here.
Photos courtesy of Dan Donovan. Top: Mark Littlewood. Below: Lord Bell. Click here for more photos of the event. Boisdale has also posted pictures on Facebook. See Behind the Scenes at The Freedom Dinner.
