The long lunch

I was lucky enough to be a staff journalist in the last days of British journalism as it once was.  That was the period of what we liked to call the long lunch, when interviews took place and business was done in a good restaurant with a bottle of wine on the table. Life was interesting, productive, and convivial, because lunch had not yet degenerated to the munching of an apple in front of a computer screen.

Even as a trainee I was expected to go out for lunch.  This, even at its shortest, would be a ninety-minute slot in the middle of the day. You set off and, no matter where you ate, you would see what was happening and come back with a story. Sometimes this derived from talks with other journalists or, in my case, musicians, and sometimes from chance encounters which, even in Edinburgh, could turn out to be be valuable sources of information.

 Instilled in me from the start, it was a part of the day to which I invariably looked forward, even if, in my novice period,  I stepped no further than the Adelphi Hotel at the top of the Fleshmarket Close, where for a time, in addition to munching bar lunches and quaffing a beer or the then popular lager and lime,  I ran a  small classical gramophone society - this was the era of the LP record - meeting weekly in a private room. It ended suddenly on the day I was recruited into the RAF, and several of its more dedicated members came to the Waverley Station to bid me farewell on the grim, dark, crowded overnight train to Bedford, where I was to be kitted out.

By the time I was demobbed two years later, the long lunch seemed an even more established way of journalistic life than it did before. There were, as always, the formal lunches, with speeches it was our duty to report. There was the annual Edinburgh Festival lunch, rather a grand affair at the City Chambers when, if a new director was about to be appointed, this was duly announced or at least hinted at. When Lord Harewood resigned, Ernest Bradbury, music critic of the Yorkshire Post in Leeds, was the guest speaker, who expressed the hope that the next director would turn out to be a jewel in theFestival’s crown. His desire was fulfilled. The next director was Peter Diamand from the enterprising Holland Festival.

A good long journalistic lunch was one from which you returned to the office at five o’clock, ready - it was hoped - to start typing. For me as a music critic (eventually of The Scotsman) there were many of these. Sometimes they formed interviews with musicians.  The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras enjoyed lunching with critics but always took care to ask beforehand who was paying. The wild-eyed Russian emigre conductor Jascha Horenstein preferred afternoon tea at the Caledonian Hotel, where he grew impatient if it was not served quickly. On one occasion while I sat quivering - he was a famously scary man - he stormed through to the kitchen and started hammering on a stainless steel counter as if it were an orchestral tamtam, yelling the words "Booma, booma, booma" at the top of his voice.   The service came instantly.

 Best of all was the great Jessye Norman lunch at Raffaelli’s Italian restaurant in the West End. The soprano had been launching the Scotsman Steps exhibition on the North Bridge and the arrangement was that the arts editor Allen Wright and I would take her to lunch at newspaper expense. She sailed into the restaurant like a magnificent galleon  with a flotilla of personal assistants, advisers, admirers and, we thought, a possible lover or two, demanding lunch for everybody.

A special long table was quickly set. The place startlingly began to look like the climax of Act One of Der Rosenkavalier. At a nearby table sat Harry Reid, the Scotsman features editor, lunching with the political writer Michael Fry, but they could not take their eyes off what was happening across the room. I had been put in charge of the wine list and was sitting beside Jessye herself. Marzemino, a red Italian rarity, caught my eye.  “Ah,” I exclaimed, “shall we drink something  operatic? What about Don Giovanni’s wine?”

With a prominent  thumb, Jessye made a meaningful downward gesture. A good Brunello di Montalcino would be preferable, she said. It was indeed good, and it added impressively to the Scotsman bill.
12 July 2014