For those of us living in London, who had to fit the Wodehouse Week into a normal routine of work (even if only part-time), contributing to family life, mowing the lawn, feeding the cats etc, the Walks seemed to offer relief.

We who had taken the splendid Norman Murphy trot through Mayfair and its environs felt we could stand aside and let newcomers benefit from the last opportunities to see, listen and learn under the Remembrancer’s unique guidance.

And if you had done the Dulwich Walk, or visited Plum’s old school for Gold Bats cricket, then even this very special slice of Wodehousian history could be reluctantly passed by, in the interests of work, family etc.

But hold! A New Tour was on the itinerary, to be led by Christine Hewitt – distinctly a fresh name, and a charmingly fresh face and voice in the world of Wodehouse perambulations.

That was not to be missed, and so we rolled up in our thousands on Monday afternoon – well, a comfortable dozen anyway, to gather by the Piccadilly Tube station world time clock.

Christine took control with cool authority: she did not wave the bright umbrella of regular tour group leaders, but donned a serviceable sunhat which gave her the air of a member of the Territorial Army on manoeuvres.

The fact that others abroad wore similar hats was a potential cause of confusion, but if Christine lacked our respected Remembrancer’s stentorian tones and commanding air, her bright smile was the beacon, and we followed with no problems.

Above ground, we found ourselves immediately in the Wodehouse World, as Christine led us into the portico of the Trocadero. This featured as the Bandolero Restaurant in Uneasy Money (the amiable but put-upon Lord Dawlish lunching there with the grasping Claire Fenwick).

Then we arrived at the Café de Paris, which in Plum’s stories is Mario’s. As Norman (via Christine) explained, this was the smartest nightclub in London in the Twenties and Thirties, after the Embassy in Bond Street.

Christine Hewitt outside "Mario's"

Here Society dined in white tie and tails. If merely in a black tie, or (horrors) a lounge suit, gentlemen were relegated to the balcony – from which vantage point Wodehouse heroes, and heroines, could watch the diners and dancers in action.

Plum used Mario’s in seven books – and as Christine told us with relish, this provided the memorable scene in Summer Lightning, “when Ronnie Fish’s ambition is to kill as many waiters as he can”, because he has seen Sue Brown apparently dining with the oily Percy Pilbeam.
For this seeker after truth, the next nugget of PGW history was sufficient to justify the entire Walk, as for years I had worried over the location of Arundell Street.

Heading down Coventry Street, Christine pointed to a shop doorway which in another era had been the narrow road entrance to that modest backwater – the setting for the opening of Something Fresh (it was Arundell Place in real London).

This was where the hotels Mathis and Previtali were located, plus three small houses providing apartments for young men and women of high ambition but limited means. The street vanished with the new building in 1920, but I now know where it was, with its moody hotel staff, its loafers, its children, its cat – and its Wodehousian young folk who may have started off in obscurity, but were guaranteed to come distinctly good in the end.

A peculiar charm of a Wodehouse Walk is the way mood and situation change. One minute you are dodging the hurrying 21st Century traffic of the world’s greatest city; the next, you are in a quiet byway transported miraculously to memories dating back years, decades, centuries.

Or you are rightly impressed by the majesty or imagination of architecture developed over the many years – and a turn round the corner leads you to trip over the rubbish bins which Westminster City Council in its own good time will clear, the pigeons meanwhile making the most of any spillage.

But traffic and rubbish and pigeons could not deter our band of seekers-after-truth as we proceeded on our inspired way.

A brief unofficial detour was taken to Cecil Court, where Nigel Williams's enticing shop was noted, although – we were strictly enjoined –; it was well and truly out of bounds. Otherwise we would have spent an age riffling through his Wodehouse shelves, and Heaven knows when the Walk would have ended. (Later some venturesome souls snuck back, and spent suitably.)

Our buoyant spirits were lifted even further by a truly personal Wodehouse link revealed when we trekked into Rupert Street, to stop by the Blue Posts pub. The adjoining alley has a house above what was once a bakery – for a time the lodgings of Herbert Westbrook, the original for Ukridge, who in the style of that unscrupulous creation, would borrow Plum’s clothes, pawn his banjo, and endlessly accumulate debts.

It was there on a February evening of 1905 that Plum’s old friend Bill Townend told Wodehouse and Westbrook the story of the disastrous chicken farming venture of one Leonard Carrington Craxton. We crowded round, to gaze rapturously at the back end of a dwelling whose grimy bricks suggested it had not been cleaned since smog stopped being a feature of the London townscape.

I quote Norman’s memorable words, as relayed by Christine: “Up there is where it all began, where Wodehouse got the plot for his first adult novel Love Among The Chickens and where Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge and his big ideas for making money originated”. Will there be an English Heritage Blue Plaque on the spot in due course, we mused?

And these links with Plum’s world provided the continuing pattern of the tour, as we trekked Eastward across Leicester Square and into Covent Garden. There we were shown the new premises of an old favourite: Moss Brothers (always known as “Moss Bross”), presented by Plum as “the Brothers Cohen”, providing every type of rig from ducal coronets and robes to multi-coloured plus-fours or fancy dress.

On and on, ever Eastwards, we yomped, to Covent Garden’s piazza, where Christine’s delicate tones had to battle with the loudspeaker-enhanced patter of a street entertainer who had drawn a goodly crowd, and was not going to let them escape.

Across The Strand and onto Waterloo Bridge before plunging down to the Embankment we trooped, turning back to climb past the Savoy (hotel and theatre, with its D’Oyly Carte links to Psmith) and finally reaching journey’s end at The Coal Hole – one of three pubs mentioned in Wodehouse which survive.

Hereabouts, it was necessary that I apologise to Christine for my impromptu interventions on tour. I had pointed out the incongruity that the sparkling new HQ of the Brothers Moss incorporated the onetime headquarters of the Communist Party (a nice juxtaposition of revolution and Establishment); that our sighting of the Drury Lane Theatre identified the area where Gladys, Lord Emsworth’s girlfriend (“Thank you, Sir”) had lived; and that after we picked our way through the gloom behind Savoy Hotel outcrops into Savoy Hill, we were at the spot where the British Broadcasting Company began converting Britons to the magic of radio.

I was delighted to learn later that the location of Gladys, having a genuine connection with PGW, had been duly incorporated into Christine’s own spiel for the Walk she led next day. You win some …

It was all tremendous fun, not least as we Plum buffs began to get to know one another, and set the scene for happy mingling in the further celebrations ahead.

But I have one complaint.

Missing from the Walk was any seedy individual slinking up to address me as Captain the Hon. Anthony Wilberforce, and to seek sixpence – or an even more seedy character in a modest way of retail business, bearing a tray of collar-studs, shoelaces, rubber rings, buttonhooks, and “dying roosters”. Not present, either, were those in desperate need of bread, and seeking the wherewithal to add it to their diet (via the liquid providers dotted through the West End).

Perhaps the Society could arrange with members of thespian bent to play such roles on future Walks?

Who knows – they might make a bit of money for the Society coffers. Before being hauled off to Bosher Street to face Sir Watkyn Bassett on charges of obstruction, no doubt.

Tour photographs taken by Tamaki Morimura and added to Hetty Litjens' website (click here)