I was lucky enough to sit next to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at a friend’s dinner the other night. I’d been chatting earlier to his wife, the novelist Polly Sampson, who had mentioned that she’d like to learn bridge some day, and so I tried to enthuse him too. Perhaps I got a little carried away. Bridge, I said, was as good as life gets; he had no much idea how much fun was in store for him; in fact, why didn’t I book some lessons for him this very summer? ‘I can’t, I’ve got a world tour,’ he replied. ‘Pfff, that’s no excuse,’ I chided. ‘You can easily fit in a little bridge…’. That’s when he decided to give it to me straight: ‘I’d rather be dead.’
That’s the problem with bridge — it has such a fusty, old-ladyish image.
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