There are some TV programmes, say Stella Street (1997 – 2001), that are unlikely to be repeated. Another is Toast of London (2012 – 2015).
But no, hark, Toast is back with much the same cast and just as crazily funny. Now it’s Toast of Tinseltown. I have only watched one of the six episodes and it made me cry with laughter. It’s pantomime for grown-ups, comedy gold and a good antidote to Chips’s travails in 1942.
Things are bad for Chips. He is down to his last magnum of Krug ‘20, brandy is almost unobtainable and food rationing, occasionally, a problem. He says the onion and eggs cooked by Lady Diana Cooper on her small-holding were delicious. Friends often send him salmon, game and other comestibles. His mother sent him butter from Chicago – how does that work? Although I don’t like lobster much I once lunched on lobster brought from Martha’s Vineyard to Bath, alive in a cold box. You couldn’t do that now, anymore than I could take dinner onto an Ethiopia Airlines flight as I did in 1998: grouse, salad, bread, cheese and a decent red Burgundy. I put the debris away, tidily, in a bag but could not find a bin at the Addis airport. Actually I had a choice of a loo seat or a door at the airport lavs and decided on the latter. I did manage to shave and wash potentially smelly places. Accordingly, I took the bag to the British Embassy and handed over the bones to our ambassador’s wife for disposal. “I would rather you had brought the grouse whole” she remarked tartly.
You might recall, or perhaps I forgot to mention, I met the UK ambassador in Ukraine – a most capable diplomat – but she was moved on in September 2019 and the new incumbent Melinda Simmons seems eminently qualified to deal with the crisis. I hope, like Monica Simmons, she will take developments in her stride. They are both qualified for their jobs, albeit the latter is a fictional PG Wodehouse character.