‘Hung-over when I left him, but tickled pink by the awards. He’s had Asian businessmen ringing him in ecstasies since the crack of dawn, and he’ll be needing their support when he runs for Parliament come next election.’

So that’s their game. Olly’s the vanity, Sandra the reality. ‘What are his chances?’ I enquire.

‘I can’t see him squeezing past the old guard at the constituency party,’ she says coolly, ‘but don’t tell him I said so. When it comes to politics Olly’s like a boy with a ball in the backyard, dreaming he’s destined to play for England.’

‘And you?’

‘Me, I’m just a working mum, doing her bit for house and hubby.’ She chuckles self-mockingly.

‘But you have other ideas?’

‘Nothing grandiose,’ says Sandra.

‘Perhaps we should discuss them, you and I?’

‘Another time, perhaps,’ says Sandra, brushing crumbs of muesli off her fluffy bosom. ‘Gosh, is that the time? I’d better run, or there’ll be no prize-giving and no winner’s lunch. I’ll catch you later, Mr S. By the way, you were brilliant last night.’

‘You were pretty sharp yourself,’ I purr, calling for the bill. We talk like a pair of first-night lovers, complimenting one another on the foreplay.

Lunch with Peter Stemp and his mother is a stiffer affair. There used to be a Mr Stemp but he, according to Sandra’s tingly briefing in my ear, ‘ran off with a barmaid from Bolton’. Peter, it hardly needs elucidating, is Mummy’s boy. He is dressed in a suit that flaps half an inch over his wrists and ankles, for him to grow into. If his mother has her way, he may never grow up. Mrs Stemp, brown-eyed and tense as a whippet, is recovering from the shock of being invited to lunch with someone as eminent as myself and in the implied majesty of the Royal Tawburn. She has nothing to wear, she protests. ‘It’s just a working lunch, Mrs Stemp,’ says Sandra, steering the awkward pair into the half-empty restaurant before, with a wave, heading back to her mundane employment.

Neither mother nor child has much small-talk, and when one of them musters the energy and effrontery to begin a sentence the other, disconcertingly, leaps in to complete it.

‘I’d like the avocado,’ says Mrs Stemp.

‘Vinaigrette, not prawns,’ chimes in Peter. ‘My mother can’t take seafood, it gives her a turn.’

‘What will you have, love?’ coos his mother.

‘What’s Waldorf––’

‘Salad,’ says his mother. ‘Peter loves his salads.’