MY experiences at The Groucho Club are confined to a short window of time back in the late 1990s when I was London Editor of the Welsh national newspaper, The Western Mail.
I was tasked with filling a column every Saturday morning called London Diary.
It was my first experience of writing a regular column and can probably be blamed for being the reason why I’m still churning out a weekly missive.
At the time the Welsh arts and media world was undergoing something of a renaissance and my best contact was a very talented and flamboyant performer called Stifyn Parri who had appeared in Les Miserables in the West End and in the title role of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
His major claim to fame though was taking part in the first gay kiss on British television.
He was Gordon’s boyfriend in the Channel 4 soap Brookside.
Stifyn (he was named Stephen Parry but decided to “Welshify” it) set up a social club for Welsh people in London called Social, Welsh and Sexy (Sws is the Welsh word for kiss) and was always a great source of gossip, stories and laughs.
One Friday evening he invited me to join him at Globe Theatre, the open air venue on the south bank of the River Thames which has been built to resemble the kind of theatre where Shakespeare’s plays would have been performed when he first wrote them.
Welsh actor Mark Lewis Jones was appearing on stage in a Shakespeare play I can’t even recall but I do remember the powerfully-built actor wore a wolfskin headdress.
And, weirdly, I remember drinking a can of Stella during the performance – which I had never done in a theatre before.
Afterwards the Welsh actor joined us at The Groucho Club for a few drinks.
Mark Lewis Jones has since appeared in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Master and Commander, The Crown and Gangs of London.
We were also joined by heart-throb actor Ioan Gruffudd, who was in Titanic.
I remember he proudly showed me the black American Express card he had recently been issued.
I was very impressed until I found out that you had to pay back what you owed on it like every other credit card.
At the end of the evening it is fair to say that we had imbibed some drink and decanted from the Groucho into the streets of Soho where Stifyn Parri had to cajole a stumbling Mark Lewis Jones towards a taxi rank.
As far as my experience with the arts and media elites at The Groucho Club goes, that’s about it.
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IT is estimated that 182,502 people work at Google, but I bet you’ve never spoken to one of them.
The parent company of the search engine business, Alphabet, is one of the world’s top five technology companies with revenues of more than 300 billion dollars last year.
My small contribution to that has been paying for several Gmail accounts that were suspended a few years ago when colleagues left my business.
Call me old fashioned, but I thought if a business service was suspended then I wouldn’t be charged for it.
Silly me.
I only discovered my mistake when I received a recent notification from Google of a price rise for my email service.
Over the last few days I’ve made an attempt to delete the suspended accounts with no success.
Where Gmail is an intuitive, easy to navigate and use product, venture into Google’s back office to look at billing and making changes to your account and you find it is a lot less helpful.
I’ve got to the point where you delete the email accounts and then a message pops up telling me that I’ve got to go to my “Google Vault” but when I go to that it says I don’t have access.
I quickly ended up banging my desk and uttering Anglo Saxon expletives.
And I resorted to making a schoolboy error.
I tried to contact a real person at Google to help me with my query.
Like many large businesses, it does its level best to avoid such unnecessary human interaction.
I thought I had booked a call from an employee for the following morning but I’m still waiting to hear from them.
So I currently have spoken to more Chancellors of the Exchequer than I have employees at Google.
I could have said I’ve spoken to more legendary Hollywood actors who starred in the lead role in Terminator than I have to people at Google, but, as you know, I don’t like to talk about that.
I’ve got to the point where I wonder if it is easier to delete my entire account with Google and start again from scratch?
I know the 30 quid a month I want to shave off my bills from Google means nothing when you are talking about annual revenues of $300bn, but the damage to customer confidence is immeasurable.
Contrast it with the customer service I received from a much smaller organisation this week.
You may remember that back in January I wrote about a trip to Harrogate with some reprobates from Huddersfield.
We were due to go and watch Harrogate Town’s League Two match again Grimsby but it was postponed because of bad weather.
The plan was to retain the ticket and go to the rearranged fixture.
However when it takes place in a couple of weeks I’ll be away.
So I emailed the club’s ticket office and received a prompt reply from ticket office manager Carey Huegett (better known as Kez, according to her email signature) that the refund would take place.
She then followed up to confirm that the transfer of the money for the ticket had been made to my bank account.
A quick internet search (I nearly said ‘Google’) tells me that Kez is a former player and manager of the Harrogate Town Ladies team.
And clearly still giving sterling service to the club.
I’VE been invited to a lunch next week by Neil Sevitt from the accountancy firm Armstrong Watson where Tom Riordan, chief executive of Leeds City Council is the guest.
I’m told that attendees will get the chance to question the genial Tom.
Neil and I have already spoken about whether there will be any other subject mentioned than the horrendous mess that is Leeds city centre.
If you’ve tried to drive to the city’s railway station, access a former one-way street that is now two-way or driven through a bus gate which has suddenly appeared and got fined for it, then you’ll know what I’m on about.
If you’ve got any ideas of questions I should pose to Tom then please drop me a line.
Given entrepreneur Simon Berwin has been one of the biggest critics on Linkedin of the traffic chaos in the city centre, I asked him if he had any questions for Tom Riordan.
Simon replied: “Would he like to resign?!
“When will they open City Square to create access to Leeds Station?!”
If I do pluck up the courage to ask the first question, perhaps I’ll caveat it with, “I’m asking for a friend.”
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I’M assuming that The Groucho Club is ironically named after the legendary quote by comedian Groucho Marx, who sent a telegram to The Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills.
It read: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
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AS its Good Friday next week the blog is taking a break. In fact it will be back in three weeks as the following week I’ve got a short break to Morocco and then I’m in Venice working at an event.
I’m not sure whether I’ll be posing in a Venetian Carnival mask and cape and serving canapes, they’ll hopefully tell me when I get there.
So Happy Easter, see you soon and have a great weekend.
