Horace Bent: So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

You’ve heard of the “Irish Goodbye” of course – leaving a pub or a party without saying cheerio to your pals. Well, the Irish wouldn’t actually say cheerio, but you know what I mean. Many of you will have seen/heard the Horace Bent Goodbye as I depart social events through a smoke machine haze while blasting my signature song, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”, from a portable gramophone (my book fair essential and the only way to listen to metal – Lemmy told me this back when I was a Motörhead roadie in the ’70s).

But a London Book Fair Goodbye, judging by the fun, loud and sweaty Curtis Brown/UTA shindig—is looking at your phone to see that you are 30 minutes late for your dinner with international agents and editors, saying “I really have to go, this instant, I cannot tarry one more second”, and finding yourself, somehow, still at the party half an hour later. Sheila Crowley may be the master of this (despite her Hibernian lineage, you always know when “the Crow” is departing) but could she have competition for the LBF Goodbye crown?

Super scout Lucy Abrahams was at CB/UTA seemingly moments before she was to host an intimate gathering (25) of publishing pals. “Oh, I’m always the last to arrive for my own dinners,” she said with sang froid which made my insides quail. “Now go fetch me another Old Fashioned, there’s a good lad.” And then there is Bobby Mostyn-Owen. The Transworlder was scheduled at a restaurant at 8 p.m.; trouble was it had already gone 9.30 p.m. And said dinner was a very long Uber ride away. Was Mostyn-Owen worried? No siree, Bobby. They were still tucking into the sliders and pizza hors d’oeuvres as I cranked up my Ozzy exit music. They might still be there.

I have never seen more people chewing gum while drinking champagne/prosecco/cava than I have at this book fair

The Americans are back at Olympia we are told, and on the evidence of my own ears I heartily believe it (they do bray, don’t they, darlings?). And I have never seen more people chewing gum while drinking champagne/prosecco/cava than I have at this book fair. Honestly, what is that? But we welcome our cousins across the pond, if only to give them a condescending pat on the shoulder – given what’s coming this November when the bewigged orange baboon returns to power – to say maybe this whole Declaration of Independence thing wasn’t a good idea after all.

A very good LBF this time out, though. A tad crowded for ol’ Horace’s taste, with the queue for every event at the Main Stage snaking around the mezzanine level like Taylor Swift was going to be speaking. The PA’s Dan Conway does have a similar, rabid fanbase and the “Con-heads” and “Swifties” are often confused. And you could hardly move along the aisles this time out, though I was able to get the crowd that perpetually gathered in a big knot around the massive German national stand to scatter when I would announce: “My name is Horace Bathsheba [mum was a Hardy superfan] Bent and I want to talk to someone about Bertelsmann, Holtzbrink and cheap English language export editions. On. The. Record.” And the crowds of German publishers would just melt away. Like magic.

See you (the lucky ones of you) in Bologna in what seems like a matter of hours.