The enthusiasts had come to meet, chat and above all to listen to those great authorities on the world of Wodehouse, Tony Ring and Norman Murphy. But first the proceedings were opened by another luminary, Geoff Hales, to whom credit is due for organising the occasion (Geoff, a local man, was scheduled to perform his one-man show, A Wander Round Wodehouse, in Cambridge the following Friday).

Tony Ring then took the audience through the main features of Wodehouse's life and work with his customary authority. As a reminder of PGW's mastery of two distinct popular art forms, he played several recordings from the Wodehouse-Kern songbook.

During the intermission brains could be heard cranking away as members attempted to answer a searching quiz devised by Geoff Hales -- questions like "What was Lord Emsworth's nickname at Eton?" being an opportunity for imaginative guesswork for those who didn't know the answer ("Fathead").

After the break Norman Murphy, enthusiasm undimmed no matter how often he has told the story, ranged over some of the feats of intuition and unremitting persistence he first documented in In Search of Blandings. Not for nothing, he admitted, is he known as "The Curse of the Libraries" for his habit of contradicting librarians when they try and tell him they haven't got what he's after.

The possibility of future gatherings in Cambridge was explored, before the band of Wodehouseans ventured out into weather which, by English standards, was about as far from a sunny afternoon at Blandings as it's possible to imagine.