Page 5 - PBCJuly2012

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine. Volume 9 No.2 July 2012
5
The President’s Luncheon – held at the Grand Connaught
harles Dickens would no doubt have been in awe of the wonderful celebration the Pickwick
CBicycle Club held to commemorate the Bi-centenary of his birth. The occasion was the
President’s Lunch, held as usual, in the newly decorated Grand Hall of the Connaught Rooms in
Great Queen Street, Holborn, London.

th
10 May was the date, and some 450 members and guests were all seated by 12.30 to receive
the President and his guests, their entry heralded by the Trumpeters of the Blues and Royals,
and accompanied by the beautifully rendered “Why Was He Born So Beautiful.”

The President, Samuel Pickwick Esq., together with
guest Peter Barnes, aka Mr.Pickwick of the Dickens
Pickwick Club (founded by our late Cedric Dickens),
Cyril Baldwin, founder and Chairman of the Rochester
Pickwick Club and our own Boz, aka Ian Dickens, took
their seats at the Top Table.

Although the usual May seating arrangements of
round tables were set up, the Top Table was set to

the opposite side of the room and a small
stage erected in its former position, thus
allowing for a truly memorable afternoon
of high quality entertainment.

The organising committee are to be
congratulated on the format which appears
to have been
based on
some of the
th
very earliest club functions. In those days of the late 19 and early
th
20 centuries, the club held a number of regular musical / smoking
concerts featuring both male and female entertainers.
On this occasion there were three plus a pianist (in addition to our
regular pianist). Louise Crane, an international operatic and concert
contralto singer with (for those of us who met her before the
proceedings) a beautiful and radiant personality (see photo with the
handsome Alfred Jingle), Justine Lavender a leading tenor with the
Royal Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala and the State Operas of
Vienna and Berlin and actor Lloyd Lee who is on tour with his new one
man show “The Squire of Gads Hill.”