Lee Mears Testimonial Dinner
14 Oct 2008, 7:55 PM by Victor Ubogu
Champagne reception kicked off at 7pm and I received a call that the coach from Bath bringing all the Bath & Bristol based players was running late due to a major accident on the M4 resulting in closure of all lanes post junction 5. This is the sort of nightmare we don't want - the man of the evening plus our MC were on board the coach! At 7.30pm, we were due to sit down, the coach had reached Hammersmith, traffic was crawling and we had used up our budgeted champagne allownance. Oh well, had to keep the bubbly rolling, at 8pm they were at Shepherds Bush, we were 20 bottles of champagne over budget - time to call all guests to dinner before our budget gets completely blown.
I assume the role of MC, welcome everyone and introduced the lovely ladies from RADA for their opening number. Just as the performance finished, the boys from the west entered the Nursery Pavilion. Relief all round from the VU team. Bath prop, David Flatman takes over as MC and runs a fabulously smooth and successful evening. Mark Regan was a star panellist recounting a story about horse racing enthusiast, Simon Shaw, being introduced to Richard Dunwoody in a Dublin nightclub following a game. Shawsy got on all fours and insisted the Richard rode him around the dance floor, Richard duly complied!
From Lord's to Chinawhite where we danced the night away like there was no tomorrow. At 4am I left Chinawhite, picked up my trekking gear from our hotel and on to Gatwick for a 6.30am flight to Marrakech to join the rest of the Afrikids Atlas mountains trekking group! more on that in a few days time.
It was fun seeing so many current and former players again and the banter flowed all evening.
Lee's next London event is the Nordoff Robbins Six Nations Dinner at the Royal Lancaster Hotel on 21st Jan 09. At this year's corresponding dinner, Simply Red brought the house down - who knows who our surprise guest act will be next Jan..be there to find out!
