Six months out of the bars and suddenly i’m a wimp. My feet are killing me after four days of presentations on the Spirit’s & Wine Stage at Gordon Ramsay’s Taste of Christmas, Excel. Long gone are the days when I could do a week of split shifts behind the bar and still have enough energy go out afterwards! I feel like the guy from the film ‘Misery’ who gets his ankles smashed up by that crazy woman.

Despite all that though, I did have an absolutely brilliant time in London over the last few days.

First things first – respect to Nigel Bardon. My co-host for the event was a complete legend and a lot of fun to work with. I told him on the first day that this (the event) would probably be the hardest gig of my life, because Nigel is not only one of London’s top food and drink critics, a guy who knows pretty much everyone, broadcaster for the BBC, but also a stand up comedian!

Fortunately, he made it very easy for me to relax into the role and I think we bounced off each other rather well! Listen out for Nigel on the Chris Evans show on Thursdays.

Through the six different sessions per day, Nigel covered wine and I did the spirits and cocktails. There were some fun moments, getting the audience up on stage to make drinks, quizzing people on wine, trying some original festive cocktails, matching whisky with cheese and even managing to get Angela Hartnett and Stuart Gilles up on the stage to make Festive Cosmo’s… chefs with cocktails, always guaranteed a laugh.

We had a great team helping us thorough it, Kate & Rowena were in charge, with the threesome of Nick, Elson and Andrew laying up the tables and cutting up the cheese! Nick in particular is a wizard at cutting up sloe gin truffles.

Laura came up and joined me over the weekend and we had an amazing meal out at Anthony Demetre’s Arbutus on Frith street, modern European cooking specialising in unfashionable cuts, I had pigs head and saddle of rabbit! Thanks to Laura for support over Saturday and Sunday (and the photos).

Hopefully i’ll get a chance to do the theatre at the summer ‘Taste of London’ event.

I did plug the blog on one or two sessions, so if you’re reading this after seeing a show, thanks and I hope you enjoyed it.

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