It was apt that so many of us should find ourselves gawping at Salvador Dali's painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross. For last night's Society of Editors gala dinner in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery proved to be a truly surreal occasion.
It began with us, black-tied or flouncy-frocked, trooping through a loud but polite crowd of Unison pickets who were demonstrating about something we could never hope to understand from the tiny bits of paper we were handed bearing the slogan: "Equal pay? Aye right!" But a couple of hours later I was wishing I had spent more time with the pickets.
It is always difficult to grasp quite what these annual dinners are about, but last year's in Windermere was relieved by an entertaining speech from Melvyn Bragg. I also remember that there were mercifully short speeches of welcome. Oh, how we ached for Melvyn during last night's dreary non-event.
The Lord Provost of Glasgow, Liz Cameron, spoke well enough but for so long we were in danger of fainting from hunger because the woman just didn't know when to stop. I think we got the message. Glasgow has changed and is changing... our newspapers - The Herald and the Evening Times are terrific... this art gallery is a palace of dreams. Indeed it was for the several sensible people who had fallen asleep.
A speech by the Scottish First Minister, Jack McConnell, was so insufferably stilted and stuffy that we wondered how he had ever got elected. (In the cab later a Scottish delegate explained in his defence that he was great behind the scenes. Fine. Let him stay there then). But McConnell was a mere warm-up act for the most stunningly dull "address" I can recall. Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 Olympics organisation, spoke without imparting a single intelligent thought. I tried to take notes but he said nothing of any consequence whatsoever, and he said it several times over. It was unrelieved by wit or wisdom and was heard in total silence by a now disbelieving crowd.
What was the point of choosing him as the main speaker? Come to think of it, what's the point of the dinner anyway? None of it had anything to do with journalism. Why were some of Britain's most senior newspaper executives and editors treated to an event of such vacuity?
If the Society of Editors wants to coax us to Manchester next year it must avoid putting us through this kind of torture again. Editors may be guilty of all sorts of sins. But they don't deserve four hours of platitudes and cold cock-a-leekie soup. Aye, right!
