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   CLUB SANDWICH 81

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TREAT ME LIKE YOU DID THE KNIGHT BEFORE

Geoff Baker explains how his New Year's peace was shattered - in the most delightful of ways

Club Sandwich 81

            The normal heart rate for an average resting male adult is 72 beats per minute. My normal heart rate is 48 beats per minute. This is not exceptional; many athletes achieve this. However, it is relatively unusual to find such a low heart rate in one whose athleticism stretches just to the exercise of lighting three packs of Marlboro per day.
            Anyway, the advantage of a low heart rate - the doctors say - is that it means the heart can cope with unbelievable degrees of stress, excitement or surprise.
            Which is good, because at 11.20 in the morning of 30 December 1996 my heart rate achieved an all-time best of approximately 377 beats per minute.
            Monday 30 December 1996 was one of winter's prettier days in England. The overnight frost still lay in the fields, sparkling in the mid-morning sun as I drove back home from the visits to friends and family that Christmas-time makes obligatory. Wary of black ice on the roads, I took my time, musing all the while of New Year Resolutions that, this time, we'd really make the pieces fit.
            On getting home, I made coffee, had a cigarette, kicked off my shoes and mooched about the place, opening cards that'd come too late, had another cigarette, took another look at the sweater my grandmother had knitted and decided that maybe it would be OK to wear - on a dark night, inside a box, at the bottom of a deep pit.
            It was a nice, calm day. King Curtis played on the stereo. Life was sort of creamy dreamy.
            Then, at 11.20am, the phone rang.
            "It's the Press Association..."
            (Oh no...)
            "It's about Sir Paul..."
            WHAT?
            "It's about the knighthood..."
            Er, yes?
            "Well done, eh? Bloody good choice. Can you get any quotes from him?"
            Him? King Curtis was now playing "got trouble in mind" and my mind was racing, reeling. Hang on, hang on. Calm down. Deep breaths, what the BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON? This news is embargoed. By Buckingham Palacel You can't go around phoning me about this. This is top secret. If you break the embargo - and this story - we'll all go to The Tower. It'll be beheadings all round. At least. So stay calm. Say nothing.
            Sorry, what did you say?
            "It's about Paul's - or Sir Paul's I should say - knighthood. We need some comment."
            Umm, er, look, between you and me (I was now hissing), this story isn't meant to break until tomorrow. We're not supposed to mention this. We shouldn't even be talking about this. This conversation shouldn't be happening until tomorrow.
            "Yeah, I know. We thought that too. They announce it on New Year's Eve and we publish on New Year's Day, it's the same every year. But the Palace has brought it forward..."
            What?

            "The news breaks publicly at one minute after midnight."
            Yes, tomorrow's midnight.
            "Not this time, apparently. Tonight's midnight."
            There is a word for how I felt at this moment. It begins with a loud capital F and people in towns 20 miles away probably heard me yell it.
            What? No, I haven't got a press release. I was going to write the press