Your man in Havana (revisited)

The 23rd edition of the Habanos Festival is currently taking place in Havana, Cuba.

Apart from a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic, this annual event attracts cigar lovers and industry reps from all over the world. It also attracts the curious, like me.

Ten years ago I travelled to Cuba for the 15th Festival. On that Virgin flight from Gatwick to Havana were fellow members of the Boisdale Jazz and Cigar Club.

Led by Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald, who had travelled to Cuba ahead of us, we were a motley group.

There was a journalist (the Daily Mail’s Peter McKay), an eccentric publican (more of whom later), a restaurateur (the son of a prominent Conservative politician), a PR woman (who told me she once did the PR for No Smoking Day), and the girlfriend of a reasonably well known punk rock star.

It was my first (and only) visit to Cuba so I didn’t know what to expect, but when we landed Ranald was there to fast track us through passport control so we avoided what looked like an interminable queue.

From the airport - which looked like something out of a Sean Connery era Bond film - we got a coach to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where we were staying.

Opened in 1930, the Nacional is a reminder of pre-Castro Cuba when Havana attracted the likes of Frank Sinatra and some of the great Hollywood stars.

Official Habanos Festival events included an extraordinary gala dinner on the final evening when special guests included Boris Becker and the American actor Danny Glover.

The previous evening I stood a few feet from Becker, inhaling his cigar smoke, at another function. As I noted at the time, we were in almost identical cream linen suits and could have been doppelgängers, although he had more hair than me.

Mostly we followed an alternative programme of events - organised by Ranald - that ran parallel to the Festival which I soon realised was far more corporate than I had anticipated.

The Boisdale programme was therefore a lot more fun (in my opinion) and being Ranald there was no shortage of fine dining - and lots of wine, even on the coaches that took us from one location to another.

You can read the full story of our trip here (Your man in Havana - notes from a Caribbean island) but if anything sums up the sometimes bizarre nature of the week it was this.

Writing about one member of our party, I noted:

Gerry is the proprietor of the Mason Arms in South Leigh, Oxfordshire. If the name sounds familiar it's because Gerry was fined £5,750 in 2008 after he admitted six separate charges of flouting the smoking ban. Following his conviction, he told the Oxford Mail:

“You make up what you want, old boy. I'm not making any comment, except Tony Blair can stick his anti-smoking law up his a***."

Funnily enough, our friendship was cemented in a rather strange fashion following our return from Havana. The last of our party to emerge from baggage collection at Gatwick Airport, we made our way to the South Terminal Car Park where we had left our cars. Lo and behold, Gerry couldn't get into his car because the central locking system wouldn't work.

Good deeds don't come naturally to me but on this occasion I didn't think twice. It was a fine sunny day and even after an eight hour flight I was curious to see the Mason Arms so I drove him to his Oxfordshire village where he gave me a quick tour of his idiosyncratic pub.

Gerry has since sent me some promotional material including several impressive reviews. According to Raymond Blanc, for example:

“I often drive around Oxfordshire to look for places to recommend to our guests. The minute I stepped into the Mason Arms I knew I had stumbled upon somewhere very special ... It's the sort of place where you never want to leave."

To his credit Gerry also sent me an absolute stinker of a review by the late Michael Winner that had me in stitches. It wasn't the pub or the food that Winner couldn't stomach, it was Gerry himself ("the most arrogant man in England", according to Winner, which is quite an accolade).

To thank me for driving him home Gerry invited my wife and me to have dinner at the Mason Arms at a later date and stay overnight.

Sadly, he shut the place down and put it in the market a few weeks later after he lost two head chefs in quick succession so we never got to experience his unique hospitality.

As I wrote here, I was genuinely gutted.