My spell as a chair at the bwf went as well as I could have hoped for. The first and only real difficulty was the elevated stage. Having the kilt on meant audience members potential for beneath tartan glimpses ran high. I apologised just in case. Everybody giggled. It was a starter for ten. It put a crack in the dam. It didn’t take too much more for a very generous audience to pour their laughter all over the panellists.
Nick Earls steamed in with a steady flow of frothy anecdotes full of writerly wisdom and easy humour. It was quality. It’s why festival peeps love him. Disco Boy and Chaser original, Dominic Knight gave the waters of authorial comedy a stir of his own and the session rapidly turned into a rush of unadulterated entertainment. I laughed my way through it. I even managed to float a couple of questions.
The boys performed like gentlemen and as the chair I had very little to do. You could say it was plain sailing.
