Michael Broadbent MW celebrated his 85th birthday yesterday with a candlelit dinner for 40 at his club Brooks’s overlooking rival club Boodle’s across St James’s Street in London. In a speech he chose to give over the Cockburn ’67, he, never a master of tact, bemoaned the fact that all of his A-list invitees accepted so that he was unable to move on to the B-listers.
Earlier speeches had been given by his daughter Emma (‘she’s such an impressive judge now that I find myself getting up to stand when I see her at home’, said Michael), who accused him...