I’m here to see this chap: awfully decent, British, filthy rich, might put money into your mag.” The Major writes for my magazine. He’s the kind of man who always wears a blazer and Italian loafers and talks like he’s taken elocution lessons from David Niven And of course he’s not actually a major. We just call him that because we know that if he lived in Bournemouth he would be a serious widow-magnet. The pseudonym comes in handy when he writes pieces that would have him struck from the golf set in Hampshire. Recently he went to confession at five of London’s smartest Catholic churches and told each priest that he had committed “aggravated adultery” (an offence that involved his racing manager’s wife and a stable-girl).

He then compiled a league table of penances.
I approached the Major’s invitation cautiously – until I realised there was a first-class Eurostar ticket on offer So I bunked off work pleading an “urgent business trip”. My deputy editor, Annie Blinkhorn, is never fooled by such ploys and said tartly: “Hmm, I’ll be interested to know just what sort of business the Major conducts in Paris. Separate bedrooms is it?” I hadn’t a clue, and she had a point. The Major may or may not be a gentleman, but everyone agrees that he’s a player. My worries evaporated with the journey; first-class train travel on a Continental service is the last bastion of the Grand Tour.

You see Europe as God meant you to: land masses that flow past your window at cinematic pace rather than topography glimpsed from a plane At 7pm I rendezvoused with the Major. He was ensconced on his barstool, glint in eye, charming a pretty blonde with his day’s adventures. It seemed he had been browsing fruitlessly in a tepid sex shop when things turned nasty. As he moved into the lobby to leave, the attendant muttered something about English cheapskates and the Major responded along the lines of: “Up yours, Jacques Delors”. The attendant then pushed some button which sent a chandelier from the lobby’s ceiling crashing on to the Major’s head. The Major reeled out on to the street with his young assailant in hot pursuit, “Kicking my arthritic knee, the bastard!” But a few “old army moves” had “seen the fellow off”.A couple of hours and bars later, minus the blonde but plus a redhead (my friend Anne Billson) we met up with the Major’s filthy rich fellow in a bustling restaurant.

Although he had lived in Paris since 1969, the squillionaire was unprepared for three impoverished dilettantes reeking of alcohol. He visibly recoiled into the armour of his pin-striped suit as the Major slapped him on the back saying, “Matey here will know if the swingers still swing in the Bois de Boulogne.” When the Major visited the gents, Mr Big leant over and confided that he hadn’t got a clue who our chap was: “He phoned and said we had met on a yacht in Greece five years ago I thought he was someone else .. Anyway, tell me about this magazine of yours. Women’s stuff? Glossy, is it?”Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anne choking back laughter “Er, not quite More of an erotic number. And Anne writes vampire novels.” Under the circumstances, it was jolly decent of him to buy us all supper before he fled. The Major and I staggered back to our hotel at 3am, where I was relieved to find we did have separate rooms – not that it would have mattered since the Major was utterly incapacitated. As I sat on the Eurostar the next day, nursing my head, I wondered why people say all that nonsense about change.