Raise a glass to your liver’s health

My husband Ivo has the same consultant as Hesketh did, and made a speech in honour of their professor, Howard Thomas, whom he toasted with a violethued fruity mocktail. The rest of us - even though we were told alcoholism causes 70 per cent of chronic liver disease - raised flutes of ice-cold Lanson champagne.

Lord Hesketh, Rob's cousin, addressed a crowd of medicine men and benefactors, among surviving members of the Beerage and other notably bibulous clans. "My family has a long and distinguished history of premature death from alcoholism," he boasted.

But real pride was reserved for the £1 million new unit, which - dig deep in your pockets for the Liver Research Trust - is in the midst of groundbreaking research on the genetic make-up of alcoholic mice that could, conceivably, lead to a cure for addiction - and a London life free of people dependent on sex, shopping or intoxicants, AA programmes and self-help groups. Just imagine!

* As I got ready to go the Spectator/GQ party at Brown's Hotel I worked out that this was the sixth Speccie party I'd been to in about three months, if I include the highest-ever circulation party at Home House, the editor's dinner in Royal Hospital and other assorted bashes. At Brown's, I asked Dylan Jones whether he was competing with Matthew D'Ancona, Speccie editor, for a new title of "London's Most Inviting". He gave a fond glance towards Nick Coleridge, md of Condé Nast, who has to pay for all this somehow. "GQ's had more parties this year than it's produced editions," he crowed, as if that settled it.

* I am used to people rushing up to me to complain about the congestion charge or whatever (I'm keeping a fat dossier, so be warned). Even so, yesterday was a bit of a shocker. I received a cross letter from Oliver Speight, father of the late TV presenter Mark, inviting me to "imagine his disappointment" that my brother, the Mayor, had yet to respond to a "letter dated September 1 (enc)". His letter made no apology for assuming that I have any influence on or knowledge of the Mayor's diary, agenda, choice of Pret sandwich, etc. This sort of thing happens all the time, and very dull it is, too.