After my two failed attempts to find a great dinner guest for our prize I was feeling a little bit down about the whole thing. However just as I was about to give up and result to calling Jilly, I received a phone call from Stephen Fry’s people…well in truth it was not a phone call but a Tweet, Stephen only ever deals in Tweets.
Stephen wouldn’t actually meet me in person as he was too busy being Quite Interesting, however he was willing to meet me via Twitter and discuss the idea of being our Ultimate Dinner Party Guest.
I will be honest I was slightly nervous as I do find it quite hard to limit myself to 140 characters and I wouldn’t want Stephen to get to wrong end of the stick simply because I had not managed to complete a sentence. Then it came, the email saying that Stephen Fry had just sent me a direct message! What excitement, one of the most famous Tweeters had just landed in my inbox!
We had one of the most fascinating and inspiring exchanges in 140 character blasts. We covered everything from aardvarks to ancient Rome, from zoology to xenophobia. Each exchange with Wodehousian wit and skilful semantics. We were getting on like a dry wooden house on fire and so I broached the subject…”Would you like to be the prize in my ultimate dinner guest competition?”…The response…”I would enjoy nothing more, we will have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the morning after”. Success at last!! I had a great prize for a great competition.
We continued our 140 character exchange for a few more minutes until it was time for Stephen to go. It was then that disaster struck! I thought I would try to compete with his intellect and bid my farewell with a joke in ancient Greek…a sure fire way to impress Fry…however it backfired. I should have listened to my Greek teacher at school, who told me I was useless at grammar! Somehow instead of making a wistful and witty remark about eating sausages for dinner, I managed to convey something entirely different, yet still involving a sausage!!
Understandably Stephen flew off the handle and refused to continue our twittering, in fact he has now blocked me as a user. Alas I can no longer read his various adverts for his new iphone App.
This incident was enough to put me off Twitter forever, plus it resulted in Fry warning the rest of the people on my celeb list that I was to be avoided. It was all over, I would be able to persuade no one to be the prize. There was nothing left to do but call Jilly Goolden!
That night I wandered into a pub in Fulham to drown my sorrows, I ordered a large whisky, sat at the bar and pondered on how I managed to end up in this situation. Then from a distant corner I heard laughter, loud laughter, the sort of laughter that comes from the belly and reverberates around every single corner of the room. I looked to see who this was and in my desperation whether they would be suitable as a prize in my competition. This was the moment I met Hans Joachim Wadsack!
After introductions and initial drinks, the evening that ensued was perhaps one of the most debauched and enjoyable I have had for some time. Plus Joe knew everything there was to know about wine, it sounded like he could cook as well as any man. Then I found out that he was a genuine celebrity…well he might not be spotted on the cover of Heat however, but he has appeared on Richard and Judy…that was good enough for me!
This was it, my quest was over, I had found my Ultimate Dinner Guest.
And now you have the very very special chance to win an evening with this man, he will bring all the food, cook it, he will bring all the wine and teach you about it…but most of all he will provide you with one of the most entertaining evening of your life!
For more info and to enter click here.
