Press Gazette editor-in-chief Tony Loynes opened the Regional Press Awards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel this afternoon by honouring Rose Hacker of the Camden New Journal, who has just been accepted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest columnist, at the age of 101.
Your blogging correspondent has already been reprimanded by the Regional Press Awards judges for working at the awards while drinking. After hearing my protestations that I was not drinking, I was reprimanded for that. I’ve been allowed to carry on by promising to begin drinking as soon as this has been posted.
That should not pose many difficulties: Loynes also warned that drinks would be plentiful this afternoon.
“The three course lunch will now be served; the awards ceremony will follow, after which there will be a bar outside in the foyer. And when that bar closes I think you all know where the other one is.”
Lunch consisted of a salmon steak with braised leeks, new potatoes and a red pepper sauce, followed by summer berries with a limoncello liqueur sauce.
The awards are about to start.
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