Liam Proven had prefaced the requested tune with a most amusing jape which ran in this fashion:

Liam: I say, I say, I say, what do you call a fellow who hangs around with musicians?

Guitarist: A drummer.

Somewhat ancient that gag is now, but bright and new back then. The drummer failed to respond with the drum-roll and cymbal-crash and when the song began took to a five-four time signature that threw all his jovial comrades out of tempo. I thought this most amusing and clapped my hands to the beat as best I could. Mr Proven, however, drew his baton across his throat and demanded that the band begin again with the drummer called to order. The band began again, but this time the drummer put down his sticks and took to reading a book.

At this point Mr Rune rose unexpectedly from his chair, took himself over to the bandstand, mounted same, struck the drummer from his stool with a single swing of his stout stick, took up the tools of the drummer’s trade and hammered out a solo that would have done credit to Keith Moon. The crowd stared, boggle-eyed and droopy-jawed, and when Mr Rune had completed his solo there was that certain silence which is generally known as the calm before the storm.

I remain to this day uncertain as to who threw the first punch. I think that it might have been me. The musicians certainly attacked Mr Rune, wielding their instruments as weapons in a manner that would one day find favour with Keith Richards. But Mr Rune was trained in the arts of Dim Mak. So it was probably his bringing down most of the band, including Mr Proven, that began the riot proper. And as some bright young thing was trying to climb onto the bandstand and have a go at Mr Rune, I felt it quite right to punch him.

I think it was an ARP man who fired the first shot. They were apparently allowed (in fact encouraged) to carry firearms and discharge them at whoever they pleased if they felt that it was necessary. He possibly shot the American serviceman by accident, as I think he was aiming at Mr Rune. But the American serviceman’s companions-at-arms, who were all fairly armed to the teeth, returned fire.

But who threw the Molotov cocktail?

And why, I had to ask myself, had anyone brought a Molotov cocktail into the Savoy Grill in the first place?

I felt now that I probably would not be revisiting the Savoy Grill in the nineteen sixties, but it had made for a most memorable luncheon.

We felt it prudent to make a most rapid (if somewhat undignified) departure at this time and I snatched up the briefcase and we took our leave at speed.

We discovered outside, parked beside a hole in the ground where our conveyance had been, a number of unoccupied taxicabs. Their drivers, being cockneys, who only love jellied eels more than a good punch-up, had hastened inside, drawn by the sounds of gunfire and mayhem and were presently warring with waiters and bellboys and others of their kind.

‘We’ll take this one,’ said Hugo Rune, a-dusting of his tweeds. ‘The key is in the ignition. Broadcasting House if you will, please, Rizla.’

Now I really took to Broadcasting House, oh what a wonderful place. I parked the cab and stepped from it to view that famous façade.

Designed by the renowned architect Sir Thomas Dalberty, in the zucker näse style, as a lasting and poignant tribute to his wife Doris, opera singer and nasal pianist.

The flanged nostril atrium with its double-bow fronting and great use made of natural light conveys no hint of what is to come when one enters the perhaps infamous network of corridors. Constructed, it is to be believed, to resemble the pattern of neural pathways within the cerebellum of a snail.

Not for nothing did Captain Beefheart pen the words: ‘This is recorded through a fly’s ear and you have to have a fly’s eye to see it.’ And although the connection might seem at first superficial, if not downright tenuous, as Mr Rune so aptly put it, ‘not on a wing and a prayer flies the wasp, but all on the toss of a coin’.

‘Do you think it will be all right just to leave the cab here?’ I asked Hugo Rune, who appeared to be applying make-up. ‘And what are you doing to yourself?’

‘Lock the cab and bring the key and I am applying make-up.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this is Broadcasting House.’

‘Are you hoping to be taken for Vera Lynn? I think Fange has that covered.’

‘I must look my best for the studio, Rizla. The lights do age one terribly.’

‘I thought Mr Churchill’s speech was going out on the wireless,’ I said.

‘It is,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Lock the cab and follow me.’

And that is what I did.

There is something almost magical about the atrium of Broadcasting House. Perhaps because so many famous people have moved through it, loitered around and about it, swanned within and posed throughout it, been there and sat there and stood.

‘I hope we see someone famous,’ I said as we entered.

‘We are bound to, Rizla,’ replied Mr Rune. ‘But please remember who you are with and try to remain dignified.’

‘Oh look,’ I said, pointing. ‘Is that not Valentine Dyle?’

‘Where? Where?’ went Hugo Rune. ‘Let me get his autograph.’

I looked at Mr Rune.

He looked at me.

Oh how we laughed together.

‘I will have to ask you gentlemen to keep the laughter down,’ said an official-looking body with a BBC-issue gas-mask case and a hint of the Lochs and Glens. ‘I am the groundskeeper here and this is the BBC.’

‘I have an appointment,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘at fifteen-hundred hours with the PM. You will find my name in the book if you look. That name is Hugo Rune.’

‘Hoots mon,’ said the official-looking body. ‘Can ye hear that wee scratchin’ sound? I ken that there’s a moose loose aboot this Broadcasting Hoose.’

And I looked once more at Hugo Rune.

But he was looking elsewhere.

Elsewhere, as it happened, happened to be towards Miss Elsa Lancaster. I recognised her immediately, as The Bride of Frankenstein was one of my favourite movies. But who was that with her, I wondered. It was not Boris Karloff.

‘That is Winston Churchill,’ said Hugo Rune. And he waved to this fellow, who waved back at him. ‘Just in case you were wondering.’

‘That is never Winnie,’ I said to Hugo Rune. ‘Winnie was short and fat and looked like a bulldog with a big cigar in its chops.’

‘I told you you wouldn’t like him.’

‘But that is not him. That is a tall skinny man with an eye-pencil moustache. That looks more like George Cole than Winston Churchill.’

‘That,’ said Hugo Rune, in a whisper and behind his hand, ‘is because it is George Cole. He plays the part of Winston Churchill. And very well he does it too, when he’s all done up in prosthetics.’

‘No no no,’ I said and shook my head to my no-ings. ‘Winston Churchill is Winston Churchill, no one ever played him.’

‘Lots of actors have played him over the years, young Rizla.’

‘Yes, but that was in films and on TV-’

‘And on the wireless?’

‘Yes, on the wireless too.’

‘I rest my case,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Point made QED.’

‘No. No. No,’ I said once more. ‘That is not what I mean and you know it.’

‘Rizla.’ And Hugo Rune now drew me to a quiet corner and whispered into my ear. ‘George Cole does the voice. Other actors, stunt-doubles if you will, do the morale-boosting walkabouts of the East End, or go off to peace talks and war talks and whatnots. But there is no specific Winston Churchill. He is a construct. An idea. An ideal. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and things of that nature generally.

‘And-’ And Mr Rune raised his finger to staunch the flow of my protests. ‘Even if there were a real Winston Churchill, he would not be running the English side of this war. The speech within this briefcase originated at the Ministry of Serendipity. And, as you know full well, the tactics employed in the military campaign against the Reich are put together by the computer Colossus at Bletchley Park.’