What goes on at the annual Boisdale’s Editor’s Lunch, ‘Britain’s most right-wing journalism awards’? Anna Moloney reports
They say the proof is in the pudding, but at the Boisdale’s Editor’s Lunch the menu goes starter, main, cigars on the terrace, all washed down with a healthy amount of whisky. I was warned by my boss to clear my afternoon.
Dubbed Britain’s most right-wing journalism awards by the Evening Standard, the lunch, this year in partnership with Xerjoff Perfumes, has been running for a decade to celebrate “writers and contributors to British culture and journalism”. Award winners included the likes of Tom Parker Bowles for Spirit Writer of the Year (“I’d never written about spirits in my whole life – Ranald called me and asked!”) and Nick Ferrari, honoured as Boisdale Life Legend of the Year 2024.
The rest of the guest list was eclectic. Big Narstie, Rebecca Ferguson from the X Factor, Richard Tice (invited but didn’t turn up), a Winston Churchill impersonator, along with a mishmash of journos and other bon viveurs who can afford to take at least six hours off for a Wednesday lunch. I was sat next to a slasher movie producer (a seat filler, he told me) and a middle-aged music promoter who flitted between telling me how much he missed Boris Johnson and how beautiful my blue eyes were.
Boisdale itself, a tartan-carpeted, Canary Wharf dining (and smoking) establishment, is mostly known among journalists for its unique payment system for contributions to its restaurant magazine: 50p a word in bar tab (formerly a pound, legend has it).
The proceedings were as one would expect: a lot of drinking, smoking (all attendees received a Davidoff cigar in their goody bag) and guffawing, occasionally interrupted for a toast to Boisdale owner Ranald Macdonald, “the only editor left who will let you write what you want”, according to one winner.
For co-host Natasha Hamilton (Atomic Kitten member and apparent late sub-in for Georgia Toffolo), some grimacing had to be done on stage. Introduced by her co-host, Daily Telegraph restaurant critic William Sitwell, as “former rear of the year” and a “fit bird”, Hamilton tittered/tutted politely through the first half before throwing back her own rebuke: “You know you get more regressive as the night goes on, it’s starting to frighten me”. Sitwell was unabashed: “Her new single is out, The Edge of Arse!”
The do kicked off at noon and I was woozy by six, though many stayed long into the evening, happily sipping their Scotch as they conversed on the merits of free markets and the declining number of spaces available for them to talk freely, as they can in Boisdale. As one impassioned award winner proclaimed, it’s the freedom to attend lunches like these on a Wednesday afternoon that are increasingly at risk. For some, that
may be cause for a toast.