Simon Hoggart's wonderful Long Lunch - with W.H. Auden, Kudu Piss and a Gorilla

Last night could have been a terrible night - for all sorts of reasons not quite right for a blog or, at least, not right quite now.

But I had Simon Hoggart's book of episodic memoir, A Long Lunch, to read. Christmas is coming (and there is still Halloween to be survived) and if any friend, you think, needs a lift, this present will not disappoint.

Hoggart is the political sketch-writer for The Guardian. For American readers unfamiliar with the role, it is the one long filled at The Times by Frank Johnson (see my review of Best Seat in the House from last year). Sketch-writers tend to be the wisest as well as the wittiest of political writers - and Hoggart has been Johnson's successor as doyen of the trade.

Last night it was the non-political passages that cheered the most, the Martini recipe which WH Auden gave him as a child, the journey by which the name Death Cab for Cutie left the pen of his father, the literary critic, Richard Hoggart, and ended up, via the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, as a cult act on the American West coast.

There is minimal comment on the cult bands but Auden, it seems, slightly disappointed the Hoggarts by drinking the bottle of wine which in those days was thought quite enough for table of three - as well as the bottle of gin into which the young Hoggart had mixed the necessary thimble full of vermouth - and then concentrating his conversation on the virtues of the Kenwood Chef food mixer. He was, however, gracious in using greaseproof paper to copy the Observer crossword so that the Hoggarts could enjoy the puzzle after he had left.

Rare cocktails of Africa are lovingly described, including the Gorilla (take one inch of orange juice in a pint jar, add beer to within an inch of the rim, top up with whatever spirit is indicated by a coin thrown at random behind the barman and enjoy) and Kudu Piss, a flourescent brew made of Rhodesian pastis and American green cream soda (it really does glow in the dark).

The world of journalism (as to all great journalists) remains a mystery to this master of its arts being, as he puts it,  'similar in many superficial ways to the real world, but also deeply different, rather like those planets the Star Trek crew visit, in which the atmosphere is identical to ours, and for some reason everyone speaks English, except they breathe through gills or have purple skins'.

And all that before we get to Margaret Thatcher and the Princess of Wales and what (I don't yet know what) Alan Clark said about Melvyn Bragg.