Hospitality at the Palace
Her Majesty the Queen hosted a lavish reception at Buckingham Palace last night in honour of the UK hospitality industry - and I was privileged to be among the guests.
The guest list was a who's who of hospitality - Bob Cotton, Ian El-Mokadem, Andrew Main, Penny Moore, Don Davenport and Gordon Ramsay were just a few of the names that lined up to be presented to the Queen. What a great endorsement of our industry - and a measure of how things have changed since the "Upstairs, Downstairs" days when caterers were neither seen nor heard, and certainly not presented to royalty.