“…I met Lionel Jeffries once — except that I didn’t. In 1974, my parents entered me for a colouring competition in The South Buckinghamshire Advertiser; the kiddywinks encouraged to colour-in a cartoon of the ‘Gravel Monster’, a satirical depiction (in the style of Punch) of local capitalist greed — for nasty, noisy, smelly gravel pits were to be dug close to the sprawling Edwardian Arts & Crafts houses of Gerrards Cross, with their tennis courts, swimming pools and croquet lawns as smooth as baize. I can’t remember exactly what I came up with, but being a creative, arty, and restless child, and handy with a felt-tip pen, my monster, I think, was covered in toxic pink spots — as if it had Scarlet Fever. Lionel Jeffries was to present the prize. A crisp, blue five-pound note. With the Queen’s head to the front and the Duke of Wellington to the reverse. Oh, great excitement! Except that Mr. Jeffries failed to turn up. Instead, and much to my intense disappointment and distress, the prize was presented by a local Liberal Councillor, who, curiously, makes a fleeting appearance in an all-time favourite book, Laughter from a Cloud (1980), the amusingly crusty memoirs of Laura Charteris, Ian Fleming’s sister-in-law, later Duchess of Marlborough…”