Saturday 17 January 2009

I spared an hour today for a bit of arranging of our Joe Raposo track, although I really want to get stuck into reading Defining Strains, which I only came across for the first time in the university library yesterday.I once spent a very happy couple of hours in the company of the late Sir John Mortimer: Lynne Walker had come up with the great idea of getting him on the radio to talk about the Mozart/da Ponte operas, and once we'd made sure that the studio was easily accessible from the ground floor of Broadcasting House, we arranged a time with him, his driver delivered him to the door, and he was charming, hilarious, knowledgeable, slightly scandalous, and every bit as much fun to be around as you could have expected. He was also already rather frail, so when asked that evening 'What did you do at work today?', I heard myself answer 'I took John Mortimer for a piss', and was strangely proud. I still am.