5A. ADDENDUM 1 – ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

A brief interlude for those of you who love Christopher Hunter …

Astonishingly, Michael was arrested at Country Cousin for burglary and accused of stealing £17,000.00 from the club safe. CC was broken into – a hole smashed through the front door. When M and I arrived the following morning to open up the club (with keys!), Michael left his fingerprints on the door not realising, until too late, what had happened. He was arrested and charged with burglary two weeks later, accused of smashing down the door and stealing the 17 grand in cash.

Christopher was outraged. He immediately insisted he be a defence witness at the Crown Court. With the dramatic conviction of Spencer Tracy in the courtroom drama ‘Inherit The Wind’, Christopher totally destroyed the prosecution, charmed the judge and convinced his Audience (sorry – Jury) to believe Michael was not only the son he’d never had, but also the most trustworthy individual on the planet and that he would give him the cash from that night’s takings to deposit in the bank the following morning. Job done. La Hunter took us both for a magnificent lunch at ‘The White Elephant’ after we left court to celebrate.  Despite threats we received from the idiots in charge of the case who’d been made to look like – well – idiots, nothing ever came of them. (Christopher told us he’d made ‘a couple of phone-calls’.)

As I said Christopher trusted us completely. We only fucked up once – but spectacularly I’m afraid.

We had dined on the ‘Captain’s Table’, feeling as we usually did that we were on some weird celebrity ocean liner. At 2 in the morning Christopher leant over between Michael and I and whispered, ‘Ms Bassey is a little the worse for wear boys. I’ve ordered a car. Would you be kind enough to accompany her and make sure she gets home safely’. We drove down Kings Road to Eaton Square. SB swanned up the steps to her house, keys in hand, and M & I sped back to Country Cousin. Two days later we arrived at CC and Christopher was waiting for us at the top of the stairs leading up to the club. He was holding up a newspaper. Front Page. Headlines. ‘SHIRLEY BASSEY ARRESTED.’ We were mortified – Christopher was livid. ‘How the FUCK did this happen?’ he said.

It could only have been seconds after Michael and I turned back into Kings Road when a police patrol car cruised round Eaton Square. Apparently a woman in a sequined evening gown was having some difficulty aligning a very small piece of ridged metal with the impossibly small aperture it was supposed to fit into. They probably weren’t prepared for the head-on hurricane that hit them when they intervened but the ensuing confrontation led to a brief stay at the local police station for SB – and unfortunately, enough headlines to create a short novel. However, once we’d explained how diligent we thought we’d been, Christopher graciously forgave us and fortunately we remained Favoured Randoms at High Table.

COMING UP next ….