Braise Be!

Club Derrig is indeed fortunate to have me as it’s President-for-Life-by-acclaim-of-all-right-thinking-people. For it is through my bulging social contacts book that I am in a position to invite new and interesting people into the bosom of my establishment: people of worth, with interesting stories, whose presence can illuminate a room and whose witty patter is often recorded by the gossip columnists for posterity.

That aside, though, I suppose I ought to write about Sir Anthony Fforbes Pontefract Desiderata Humongous Braisby (or "Bud” to his drinks-buyers), partner of Lady Amanda Kendal of Westmoreland.

Braisers – as he was known at boarding school - is also a botanist of some repute and, a political philosopher of absolutely no damned repute at all.

He is credited with discovery of the Anargalis Arvensis, having sought it here, having sought it there, having sought it every darned where.

Wearing his philosopher’s hat he also redefined the word ‘Communist’ in such a way as to allow for self-definition and the subsequent explosion in two-men-and-a-dog type political sects up a creek with no paddle.

Taller (and marginally more kempt) in real life than he appears in photographs, he would have been the man for whom they invented the word suave, if they hadn’t invented it for me first. He is also much, much younger than many people of his own age, or even younger, despite his carefully-cultivated attempts to appear so much more mature.

He is gifted with a superb speaking voice, with perfect articulation and a mesmerising basso-mumblo. He has turned down many lucrative offers for voice-over work, and was British Telecom’s first choice for the speaking clock. Instead he has chosen to put his skills to the service of the public as an announcer on the underground’s Northern Line, where his admirable diction is deployed declaiming various excuses for delays and cancellations in the enormously wide-range of accents at his easy disposal.


Also an acclaimed thespian (see above) he has starred in a huge range of high-profile non-speaking parts in films as diverse as Lulu, Lulu Dawn, and Lulu Dawn II, most often in a role he made his own as third spear-carrier.

Often mistaken for a TV celebrity chef he says he can no longer dine in the finest restaurants for fear of being asked to whip out his utensils and stir the soup with them.

Braisers' only failing, he says, is his mdmmommetmmstmyy. Sorry, what? Oh! His modesty.