Life, liberty and lunch – a celebration

Well, that went quite well.

Despite some late withdrawals, we pretty much had a full house for the 2023 Forest Summer Lunch & Awards at Boisdale of Belgravia on Tuesday.

In fact we had to accommodate some guests in the Courtyard, which is immediately adjacent to the main restaurant, because there were too many for the Mac, as it's called.

That worked rather well, I thought, because it generated even more atmosphere and when it came to the speeches and awards everyone came through to the main restaurant so it was literally standing room only.

Before lunch the smoking terrace was packed (and quite smoky!) but we managed to get everyone seated on time.

The schedule slipped a little after that but I think most people had written off the afternoon, so I don't think it mattered too much.

Huge thanks, as ever, to our host Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants.

Ranald reminded guests how long we have worked together. I first approached him as a potential ally in 2004 and Forest has been hosting events at Boisdale ever since.

A few days before the introduction of the smoking ban in England in 2007 we also co-hosted a valedictory dinner for 400 people at the Savoy Hotel (principal guest speaker: Andrew Neil) that was attended by TV crews from twelve countries including Russia, Greece and France. (Newsnight was there too.)

But I digress.

Ranald presented the first award of the day to Ricardo Carioni, who describes himself as a 'true and passionate cigar champion'.

Ricardo (below) was recently appointed CEO of Gesinta International Tobacco Company, 'the leading premium cigar company in Spain'. Prior to that he was COO at Tor Imports, another cigar company.

He is also a former deputy ambassador of Nicaragua to the UK, Ireland and Iceland, which led to a minor diplomatic incident when he was challenged by two guests on Nicaragua's human rights' record.

According to The Times Diary yesterday:

Sparks flew at an awards lunch held at Boisdale of Belgravia yesterday by Forest, the pro-smoking group, after a former Nicaraguan deputy ambassador was seated opposite Paul Staines, the libertarian political blogger better known as Guido Fawkes.

Prickling at Staines’s comments about his president, Daniel Ortega, the diplomat sniffily asked what he knew about Nicaragua, allowing Staines to puff his 1089 book about human rights abuses under Ortega's Sandinistas.

There was, however, a glimmer of agreement. "Communists do make the best cigars," Staines conceded.

The other guest who confronted Ricardo was my old friend Peter Young, with whom I edited a student newspaper at Aberdeen University in the late Seventies.

Peter was subsequently elected chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students (beating Anna Soubry!), and later founded Adam Smith International, the commercial arm of the Adam Smith Institute.

By coincidence, the day before our lunch CapX had published an article by Peter castigating the lack of sanctions imposed on Russia by South American countries including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. (See ‘The West must crack down on Russia’s Latin American proxy states’.)

Anyway, blissfully unaware of the contretemps, I said a few words about smoking and vaping (that I might publish in my next post), before introducing our guest speaker:

His TV credits include Live at the Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow, and Channel 4’s Stand Up for the Week.

He is also a regular on Radio 4’s The News Quiz, and various other panel games, and from 1998 to 2002 he wrote and hosted eight series of the news satire, The Way It Is.

He is to date the only comedian to have appeared on both University Challenge: The Professionals, and Christmas University Challenge. He also won Celebrity Mastermind in 2012, with his specialist subject being Sir Ernest Shackleton.

He has also appeared multiple times on various debate shows, including BBC Question Time and The Big Question.

He writes for the Telegraph and the online magazine Spiked, and he is also a presenter on GB News where he hosts Headliners, the late night look at the next day’s newspapers.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to … Mr Simon Evans.

I think it's fair to say that Simon was one of the best speakers we have ever had.

Not only was he funny, but he engaged with our audience, and the subject, in a way that few of our other speakers have done.

Better still, not only did he join us for drinks before lunch, he was one of the last to leave, hours after the event had (officially) concluded.

Very few speakers do that so I do believe he enjoyed himself!

Talking of awards, there were six presentations in addition to 'Cigar Champion'. The first I described as bittersweet because it was a posthumous award to the late Russell Lewis, who was a non-executive director of Forest for 30 years, from 1992 until his death last year.

Russell's award was accepted by his son Dan. (See also ‘A tribute to Russell Lewis’.)

The next three awards were presented to Reem Ibrahim ('Young Freedom Fighter of the Year'), Kara Kennedy (Best Article: 'An ode to smoking'), and Alwyn Turner (Best Essay: 'Time takes a cigarette').

Reem and Alwyn were there to collect their awards in person.

Kara, who works for The Spectator World (the US edition of The Spectator) and recently moved to America, sent us a short acceptance speech which we read out:

When I wrote the column on smoking after a big-name columnist dropped out and we scrambled to fill the space, I had no idea of what the reception would be. It turns out that smoking really does bring people together and shows that the spectator in particular has a very fun/anti puritan readership. I’m honored to be given this award and am very sad that I’m not here to collect it, however, I’ll be at Shelly’s, my new favorite smoking bar in DC, which is so smoky you can barely see the people you’re with. Cheers!”

The winner of our next award ('Best Use of Taxpayers' Money') wasn't present so we invited John O'Connell, director of the TaxPayers Alliance, to accept it and say a few words.

The absent recipient was the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP for (allegedly) having a smoking den built ('with taxpayers' cash') on the roof of his government department.

Last but not least, we invited Chris Snowdon, editor of the Nanny State Index, to choose - from one of three nominees - the 2023 'Nanny-in-Chief' award. They were announced (by me) as follows:

Our first nominee is George Osborne. When he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer under David Cameron, he introduced the infamous sugar tax. This year, despite raising tens of billions of pounds from smokers when he was chancellor, he called on the government to ban the sale of cigarettes in the UK. He also wants the sugar tax extended to fruit juice and milkshakes.

Our second nominee is Deborah Arnott. As director of the anti-smoking group ASH, Deborah continues to demand further anti-smoking measures – whether it be raising the age of sale, higher taxes on cigarettes and tobacco, or a tobacco levy that would push the price even higher.

But the reason she’s been nominated for a Nanny is because it’s exactly 20 years since she was appointed director of ASH and she STILL hasn’t been honoured with an MBE or OBE - unlike the directors of Smokefree South West and Smokefree North West which don’t even exist any more - and we think 20 years of nannying the nation deserves some sort of recognition.

Our third and final nominee is Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting. According to Wes, reducing smoking AND vaping will be “priority” for the next Labour government, and he has promised to consider the New Zealand policy whereby the sale of tobacco will be banned to everyone born after 2008.

After mulling it over and eliminating – after careful consideration – two of the three candidates, Chris announced that Britain's 'Nanny-in-Chief 2023' is .... former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

Officially the lunch was then over but I'm pleased to say we were joined on the terrace for several hours by many guests who seemed reluctant to return to their work, and the final guests didn't depart until almost 9.00pm.

One of them was Chris Snowdon who commented on Twitter, 'One hell of a day!'.

Other comments, received via email in the last 24 hours, include 'What an excellent lunch', 'Great speeches and fantastic company', 'A wonderful event with fantastic speeches, food and smoke', ‘Fantastic ethos, brilliant company ... May Forest fight on for our basic civilized values a good deal longer.'

I'm happy with that.

PS. There is a fabulous gallery of photos here. Do have a look.