The Presidents Club, and how awful it is to find oneself in the same camp as lefties

The Presidents Club charity fundraiser in full swing

And the aftermath...

I haven't paid a lot of attention to the various accounts of what did and didn't happen at the now notorious Presidents Club dinner, where, we're told, slavering City fatcats chased scantily-clad maidens as if they were all appearing in an epic film version of The Benny Hill Show. My instant reaction was straightforward: how sordid, sad and repellent. I know this will make me sound like a ghastly metrosexual wimp, but I've just never been drawn to all-male events - braying heartiness,  slobbering drunkenness, dirty jokes and filthy songs leave me cold. I've never wanted to belong to an all-male club or go on holiday with a bunch of male mates or hang around the pub nudge-nudging with the chaps:

I suppose it's because I'm basically a prude. And (believe it or not) quite shy. Besides, I enjoy the company of women - not in that godawful "Oh yes, I love the laydeez" way, because, whenever a man says something like that, you suspect they've never in their whole lives held a meaningful conversation with a real, live woman who wasn't being paid to massage their limp little egos. No, I mean that I enjoy the society of women as much as I enjoy the society of men. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing I like more than a chinwag with one, two or three male chums. But the prospect of spending time with a large group of males - especially when drink is being taken - does not float my boat.

A few years back, an old friend of mine took over a London restaurant for a 60th birthday lunch. I was looking forward to it - until I learned that it was to be a men-only do. That struck me as odd - what about his (heterosexual) attendees' female partners? He must have known and liked at least some of their wives or girlfriends. And what about his female friends? I'll spare you the details - there wasn't a hint of debauchery, but there was a lot of drinking and heartiness and off-colour joke-telling. I was fortunate to find myself at a small table with three old friends, and we had a thoroughly good time (I suspect they felt as uneasy about the event as I did, and just as relieved to be semi-detached from it ). But it all felt wrong, somehow. As I left the restaurant, I vowed that I would never attend another all-male event - and I haven't. (Not much of a sacrifice, to be honest, because I haven't actually been invited to one!)

Look, I'm trying not to sound too prissy or censorious - I'm really happy for men who enjoy this sort of thing to arrange and attend as many all-male functions as they damn well please: I'm not condemning anyone - just stating the fact that I don't much enjoy events from which women have been deliberately excluded. This doesn't make me a good person, or morally superior - for all I know, it could indicate that I'm testosterone-deficient: or maybe, having attended a boys' school and an all-male college, and having been awkward with girls until at least my late teens, I don't wish to deny myself the pleasure of women's company (in an entirely innocent way, of course) if I don't have to (they may feel differently about having to endure my company, of course). 

With that out of the way, back to the randy blighters at The Presidents Club event. I'm ashamed to admit that I was feeling a vague sense of relief at finding myself in the same camp as the metropolitan liberal-left: it doesn't happen often. But then Yvette Cooper popped up on the television, the expression on her little munchkin face signalling cosmic levels of resentment and high-minded disapproval - and I decided that, no matter how repulsive the behaviour of the rich, emotionally retarded, socially awkward boors at the charity fundraiser (as long as that behaviour stopped short of rape, obviously) I'd prefer to spend an hour with them than a minute with Yvette or any of her hectoring, puritan ilk, with all their faux outrage and their permanent war against heterosexual white men. Then Theresa May temporarily emerged from her cataleptic trance to attack her own ministers (evidently the only politicians she ever gets riled up about) and spew out some pre-programmed soft left boilerplate before heading off for Davos to deliver one of her spectacularly boring, morale-lowering, mushy, middle-ground speeches - and I knew I had to swallow my disapproval of the Presidents Club crowd on the basis that anything Mrs. May is for, I'm against. 

As for Great Ormond Street Hospital's decision to return £530,000 raised on its behalf by the Presidents Club - damn their cringing cowardice and damn the loveless, bullying, compassionless, cultural Marxist liberal-left, whose vile behaviour makes it virtually impossible for decent conservatives to share any opinion with them, even when they're sort of right.