Bertie at the Bilderberg

Spring was doing its thing, the snail on the wing, the lark on the thorn, and morning was about quarter past eleven, as I trickled into the old Bilderberg for a snifter. But all was not as of old. Jeeves had warned me, on sending me forth into the wide world with my whangee and my yellowest shoes, that the old security had been stepped up a smidgeon. So I was about two-thirds prepared for the chappie who stopped his bullet-proof limo alongside me and invited me to hop in. “You can’t be too careful, Mr Wooster”, he said.

Now, I’m as aware as the next man that a certain amount of pre-prandial bread gets bunged about at the Bilderberg, especially when Catsmeat Potter-Putin is in attendance. But I could hardly credit that it was necessary to employ the horny-handed to protect the Wooster bonce from the odd ballistic baguette. “But no,” said my charioteer, “it is the oiks below who are feared by the gentlemen of your esteemed society.”

Well, if that’s the case, then your humble narrator asks no further questions. Indeed, when I entered the club, nothing seemed to be amiss. Oofy Prosser sat in his usual corner, his pimples flashing angrily at anyone who looked likely to try to touch him for a couple of billion. Conky Kissinger was holding forth at his usual table, with Boko Bush, Barmy Berlusconi, Sheepface Sarkozy, and the usual crowd hanging on every word. By the window an old fossil called Rockmetteller sat in a leather chair in an attitude I swear hadn’t altered one iota since the 1973 world oil crisis.

I ordered myself a convivial whisky-and-splash, and sat down with “Fruity” Cholmondeley-Friedman.

“Skin off your nose, Fruity, old robber baron,” I said.

“Mud in your eye, old fleecer of the widow and orphan,” he replied.

“So what’s all the jolly old manning-of-the-ramparts and battening-down-the-hatches about?”

“Why, Bertie, where have you been for the last few aeons?”

“Oh, you know, Cheltenham, Aintree, Epsom, whatever...”

“Well, these days the great unwashed have got the idea that we’re running some kind of alternative World Government up here. All nonsense, of course; who on earth could be bothered with all that effort? No money in that sort of thing, anyway. Mind you, it’s true that some of the younger members find it rather a lark to be thought of as movers and shakers and Men of the Future; the only future the rest of us are interested in is when they’re going to buy their bally rounds. And the old jossers are just delighted that they can find someone who’s still prepared to take them seriously.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to have anyone thinking that good old B. Wooster was important enough to warrant bumping off.”

“My dear chap, when have you ever heard of any of this lot being prepared to take responsibility for anything?”

“My dear old bean, you haven’t half taken a weight of my mind. Have another?”