It's traditional for the outgoing Hotelier of the Year to host the following year's award lunch. This year's award was therefore presented to Michael Gray at Calcot Manor, whose Managing Director, Richard Ball, was the 2006 winner.
Welcoming guests to the lunch, Richard emphasised the fear-factor involved in throwing your hotel open to an A-list of pretty much every UK hotelier of note from the past quarter-century. (This year, the lunch drew its usual stellar list of hotelkeepers, among them Robin Hutson, Ramon Pajares, Peter Lederer, Martin Skan, Harry Murray ...)
He described how, as a younger man trying to establish his country house hotel in Gloucestershire, he had read of Hoteliers of the Year in the Caterer and wondered whether perhaps, one day, one of these iconic hoteliers would deign to come and stay with him.
"I never imagined 17 of the buggers would turn up on the same day!" he quipped.