Last week saw a host of industry leaders descend on the Dorchester on Park Lane for this year’s Catey award judging sessions.
Stepping into one of the luxury hotel’s lifts, one industry veteran described the time he found himself as a Dorchester employee riding down to the ground floor with the then prime minister of Israel and a group of sunglasses wearing, dark-suited security types taking up the remaining limited space.
Keen to get out of the way of the agents’ reflective gazes, he gratefully jumped out of the lift as the doors swept open, only to come face to face with a Middle East sheik in formal garb flanked by his own security detail.
Quicker than you can say “extraordinary rendition”, the Israelis had guns in their hands and the Arabs swords at the ready.
Our man, having nothing much more than a name badge about his person, decided actions would speak louder than words and performed a hasty tactical withdrawal down the corridor.
We never learnt the outcome but having no recall of famous massacres at the Dorchester, one can assume it all ended peacefully.
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