With former press baron Conrad Black set to appear on Have I Got News For You on Friday, his fellow members of the Garrick Club are wondering whether he will visit the club while he is in London.
Black was so excited about being granted membership when first elected that he turned up in the bar the next day wearing the club tie. Since then he’s not set foot in the place. Yet throughout his incarceration for fraud in the US and despite a long-running dispute with creditors over unpaid debts his subscription continued to be paid by direct debit each month.
For reasons that have never been explained by the Garrick’s general committee, a jail term was not considered sufficient cause to expel him for conduct unbecoming. Garrick members would like to be present in the bar when Black comes face to face with his biographer and fellow Garrick member Tom Bower, against whom Black still has an outstanding libel action in Canada. That will be one showdown the Londoner won’t want to miss.
