On 26 June there is a party at the Spectator office at 22 Old Queen Street to launch a paperback collection of Low life columns. If you would like to come, please send an account, in about 800 words, to editor@spectator.co.uk by 15 June of your worst or funniest debacle when intoxicated. If more than 12 readers send a story, then the senders of the 12 best stories will be invited. The following, for example, is an account of what happened to me only last week.
At the literary festival bar I ran into a writer I’d met a couple of times at parties. He was perched at the bar and waved me over, asked me what was I having, and appeared so pleased to see me that I felt sorry for him. I asked him whether he was speaking. He was, he said, and signified his despair with a gesture of prayerful Christian penitence.
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