It was Thursday. The Convention had not officially begun. Yet you knew all was going to be well as soon as you set foot in the library reading room which was being used for registration for the 2003 ‘Right Ho Toronto’ Convention of The Wodehouse Society. You had to pass through the main entrance of the library of St Michael’s College, appropriately known as ‘St Mike’s’, to get there. One librarian was watching in some bemusement as Wodehouse enthusiasts walked by. ‘Who are these people?’, he asked a colleague. The senior librarian duly told him. And then he said: ‘Do you know what to say to them?’. His colleague still looked nonplussed. ‘You just say “What Ho!”’, said the librarian. It was obvious that the convention was on home territory.

This was confirmed by an evening in the bar at the local Windsor Arms Hotel, where old friendships were renewed, new ones made, and people made bids to be known as: ‘A large Gin and Tonic in the corner’.

Next morning was the start of the Convention. So it also dawned as the day of the great cricket match. This is traditionally the point at the convention where American Wodehouse enthusiasts gain a smidgen, or more, of what it is like to experience the playing of the game which meant so much to the great man. And as the game progressed a sub-plot emerged which would have sat happily in one of his books.

Tony Ring, UK Society committee member, honorary umpire and explainer of the rules for the occasion, was leading the gaggle of would-be cricketers onto the site of the hallowed turf of the day at Trinity College. We had found the field, a very pleasant meadow at the back of the college in the heart of Toronto, but had not found any other facilities. A chap wearing jeans and a shirt emblazoned with the word ‘janitor’ came past. He provided the answers required and then responded with a question about what the assembled hordes were up to. Ring told him that the mighty game of cricket was about to be played. The chap showed some interest and Ring invited him to play. It turned out that he was a Fellow of the college and also, at another college, a Professor of Canadian Theological History. This was undoubtedly going to add a bit of extra local colour to the event.

There was a brief hiatus when it was realised that no one had brought any bails. Pencils sufficed, and batsmen were down to one pad each. The May Queens batted first with Bill Franklin taking a stylish single off the first ball. Then the game settled into its traditional pattern of ‘wides’ being the strongest scorer. Jean Tillson took great delight in bowling Franklin. She let out a great shout of: ‘That’s for you, Murray’. The veteran cricket-writer and Wodehousean, Murray Hedgcock, who has also been a great mentor of The Wodehouse Society in its cricketing attempts, was not present. But he doubtless felt a slight tremor run through the air as he raised a cup of tea to his lips on the other side of the Atlantic at his Richmond home in London.

Then came the sub-plot. Out strode Bill Westfall, the Canadian professor, and took everyone aback with a brisk request for ‘two legs’ as he took guard. He failed to score off his first two balls and then swivelled on his back foot and hit the ball high into the college where it safely bounced off a window for six. He then hit four, six, four, all resoundingly off his legs into the college façade and amongst startled spectators. ‘Have you, er, played this game before?’, someone asked. It turned out that as a junior he had represented Canada and had, in his time, sat in the Long Room at Lord’s. The Green Swizzles team started muttering about ringers. But Westfall immediately fell foul of the ‘compulsory retirement on a score of twenty’ rule employed in these matches.

Thereafter the innings fell away. Curtis Armstrong, for all his Hollywood prowess, spent a long time compiling a duck and with military precision Major Tom Smith compiled three. Sarah Conrad bowled her mother and later in the day was presented with the award for the most accurate bowling. The May Queens’ final total was 78, with 16 being extras.

The Green Swizzles innings was interrupted by the traditional cricket tea, which played its usual strategic part by distinctly slowing up the subsequent batsmen. Your scribe was out off the bowling of Curtis Armstrong when a leading edge bounded up into the sky before falling into the waiting gloves of the ubiquitous Canadian professor, now eagerly fulfilling wicket-keeping duties. Jean Tillson held the efforts together with an exceptionally dogged three which lasted almost the entire innings. The Canadian professor then took to bowling and, in a first for TWS cricket matches, actually set a field, a hitherto unheard of practice. Eileen Jones, an English member making her convention debut, injured her knee from a heavy fall when going for a very sharp single. But it was all to no avail. Even with some 22 extras totted up by match scorers Elaine Ring and Hilary Bruce the Green Swizzles could only amass 59. The May Queens had won by 19 runs. Conspiracy theorists muttered darkly that the difference was almost exactly the contribution of the professorial ringer. But no one worried too much and instead made off to the nearby Duke of York pub where, curiously enough, the food was served on cricket-bat-shaped platters.

In the evening the cricketing awards were presented at the evening reception which launched the convention proper. There was much browsing and sluicing and, once he had mastered the mechanics of a cassette machine, the great Norman Murphy danced in a flamboyant fashion with every willing, and some unwilling, women in the room.

Saturday saw the more formal proceedings. It was up to Elliot Milstein, on behalf of the Detroit Chapter of the Wodehouse Society – The Pickering Motor Company, to explain why it was being held in Toronto. ‘Enter the true spirit of Detroit’, he exhorted us, ‘and enjoy the fine city of Toronto’. He then gave a paper based firmly on his own post-graduate research on Wodehouse which he had undertaken in the self-same college where now the convention was taking place. One of his inspirations had been the presence in the college of a very elderly monk who had read Wodehouse’s school stories as they were published.

Denis Chitty, a retired Professor of Zoology whose autobiography – ‘Do Lemmings Commit Suicide?’ – include references to Lord Brancaster’s parrot, gave an entertaining talk on the sources of many Wodehouse allusions and analogies. Tony Ring then provided an exhaustive survey of the Wodehouse contribution to the world of theatre. Amongst a mass of asides he pointed out that English theatrical censors had once pencilled out the phrase ‘God’s Trousers’ as being, amongst other things, ‘sartorially inaccurate’. Jan Kaufman, incoming President of the Society, provided an enjoyable paper on the points at which the worlds of Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh connected. Then children’s writer Richard Scrimger brought the morning’s proceedings to a noisy end as he revealed how several of his books, particularly ‘Noses are Red’, owed a debt of plotting to Wodehouse. He pointed out that Wodehouse books, like children’s books, often depended on the use of a secret at the heart of their plots. And they also shared a belief in the existence of a paradise ‘where the worst thing that could happen is that you have to marry a pretty girl’.

After lunch came the business meeting. Outgoing President Susan Cohen announced an important acquisition. A member had died leaving the Society a framed letter from PG Wodehouse which, in Cohen’s words, should become the Society’s Charter. In it Wodehouse responds to a suggestion that a Wodehouse Society should be formed by saying that the idea would make him very happy. Hilary Bruce, Chairman of The PG Wodehouse Society (UK), then delivered greetings from the other side of the Atlantic and updated the Toronto audience about some recent developments ranging from pig-racing to the birth of PGW's great, great step-grandson.

Jan Kaufman formally took over as President and to universal acclaim Jean Tillson was appointed Vice-President. There was then an interruption and some spirited byplay from the back row of the auditorium in which it was announced that the next convention, in August 2005, would be held in Hollywood.

Then it was back to the more formal programme with Elin Woodger-Murphy delivering a paper written by Helen Murphy, who sadly was unable to be present. The paper made the case for ‘Wodehouse as one of the most consistent feminist writers of the twentieth century’. After this an advance warning of what to expect from Hollywood in 2005 came from Curtis Armstrong. Despite having co-starred with Tom Cruise and made regular appearances in the television series ‘Moonlighting’, Armstrong has remained a Wodehouse scholar and shares the Mulliner stories’ scepticism about the American film business. He referred to the Mulliner stories as ‘a dazzling messing about with reality’ and as ‘a perfection of form’ comparable to the Canterbury Tales. He confirmed that the nodder as a Hollywood persona still exists though he suggested that the 1980s was the last great nodder boom. He speculated that had Wodehouse persevered with his Hollywood scriptwriting career he might have worked with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity thus ensuring that when Barbara Stanwyck blackmailed Fred McMurray he would not have murdered her husband but would instead have simply punctured his hot-water bottle with a nail on the end of a broomstick.

The last speaker of the day was the multi-faceted Major Tom Smith. With a career spanning both the US Army and the US Navy, while taking in a time providing naval support in Antarctica, it was unsurprising that he chose to talk on ‘The Military Men in Wodehouse’. His suggestion that ‘quite a few are inept’ was met with an interjection from Colonel NTP Murphy sitting bolt-upright in the front row. ‘Very few’, he said in as curt and military a manner as he could muster. 'Very few’, agreed Major Tom.

The Major knew what brings a Wodehouse audience to its feet. He recounted the career of Lord Brabazon and pointed out that as a young man he had piloted the first air-freight flight carrying a live cargo. A photograph flashed up onto the screen. There was clearly a pig poking its snout out of the crate lashed to the wing. Amidst the storm of applause Smith was able to point out that it also proved that pigs might fly.

The Pickering Players brought the formal events of the day to a close with a very funny dramatised reading of ‘Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate’. Richard Scrimger, Curtis Armstrong, Elliot Milstein and fellow members of the Detroit Chapter excelled themselves.

The evening was given over to the formal cocktail party and banquet. A mass of Wodehouseans dressed as various characters alarmed fellow guests at the Sutton Place Hotel but intrigued the reporter and photographer from Toronto Life magazine. Awards were made, Ed Radcliffe, Editor of Plum Lines for many years, was honoured, a fine meal was eaten. No bread rolls were thrown. This was put down to a combination of experiences at previous banquets, lawyers’ letters, the disagreeable mixing of red wine, white clothing and dry-cleaners’ bills, the impact a stale roll can have on an eyelid at fifty paces and a variety of other complex issues. The evening ended in splendid disarray with music from a banjolele, played by a Professor of Shakespearean Studies, accordion and piano and an element of champagne.

The farewell brunch the following morning was seemingly unharmed by hangovers and the Blandings Castle Chapter, as custom now demands, performed a reading. This again looked forward to 2005 with a Hollywood tale resoundingly expounded by, amongst others, both Radcliffes, Bill Franklin and Marilyn MacGregor.

After that there were the usual tearful farewells and a general agreement that the purpose of The Wodehouse Society had been noisily upheld. Given that the purpose is to be ‘an association of agreeable human beings who share an admiration of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse and the rich products of his imagination’ there was little doubt that the Toronto convention had been a triumph.