If you’re at a high-profile but dreary launch of a political memoir at Daunt’s or find yourself in the Red Lion in Westminster any weeknight after six, Samuel Ordington-Mortimer will almost certainly be there, too. You usually hear him before you see him: a braying, gleefully indiscreet voice regaling his listeners with the latest salacious tidings at top volume.
By the time he hovers into view, a florid figure whose flushed cheeks perfectly match his claret-coloured trousers, you can expect either a cry of ‘dear boy’ or ‘darling girl’, regardless of how well you know him. There then follows a parade of cheek-kissing, occasionally with a ‘friendly’ squeeze on the arm or buttock, depending on how many glasses of wine have been consumed that evening. Samuel, after all, prides himself on being ‘an equal opportunities lecher’, although given that the eau d’ Ordington-Mortimer is cheap claret and tobacco, his would-be conquests are usually unbeguiled.
Once the business of greetings and introductions is dispensed with, Samuel gets down to the matters in hand: the exchange of gossip, which he hordes as zealously as a miser and offers on a strict business of reciprocation. For every story that he divulges – many of jaw-dropping inappropriateness, consisting usually but not exclusively of sexual and moral indiscretions committed by household name politicians – he expects something of equal import in return. These tidings will then be noted, stored up, repackaged if appropriate and then doled out, one by one, at the next event that Samuel finds himself invited to. He is not above gatecrashing, but has largely managed to avoid any embarrassing ejections from parties, save that one unfortunate incident at The Spectator’s summer bash.
If Samuel believes that your intelligence is sub-par, he will swiftly move on to other, more promising prospects. He will dismiss you with his usual benediction of how ‘it’s been so wonderful to catch up, it’s been far too long’, even if he met you for the very first time ten minutes ago. However, if he considers you a source worth mining, then the Ordington-Mortimer charm will be deployed at weapons-grade levels. There will be the offer of further drinks and then, if his new friend seems keen to divulge stories that will truly benefit him, the suggestion of ‘lunch next week, at my club?’
Samuel is, naturally, a Savilian, although it is rumoured that he is at least six months behind with his membership dues, to say nothing of an unpaid bar bill stretching into four figures. Still, when his guests do turn up, they can expect the most lavish hospitality imaginable, starting with pre-prandial gin and tonics, and ending, several hours later, with the stupefied invitees having another ‘tiny glass of port’ pressed upon them, after they’ve consumed their own bodyweight in wine and nursery food. Samuel, they might or might not have noticed, has not been matching them drink for drink, but has instead been taking careful notes in his Smythson notebook, occasionally breaking off to check a precise location, name or other detail that will add verisimilitude to his story.
Quite what Samuel does with all this information isn’t commonly known. Several leading political editors have been known to send him desperate WhatsApp messages the night before deadline, begging for titbits. Sometimes he deigns to reply but, more often, the messages are left unread. There are rumours that he is writing a memoir or ghost-writing someone else’s but these are unsubstantiated. Those who have been lunched by Samuel often worry that their own indiscretion will find its way into public view, and have been known to ring him in a panic. But he assures them, every time, that their secrets are safe with him. And, for the time being, at least, this has held true.
Still, what nobody knows is who Samuel Ordington-Mortimer really is. He emerged a decade and a half ago without any friends from school or university and if asked any potentially awkward questions about his education or background, he simply laughs and deflects the conversation into something unseemlier. Many believe that his actual name is Sam Ord, and that he heralds from some undistinguished suburb of Sheffield, but conceived a near-obsession with the world of politics after an early immersion in House of Cards on television.
Whether this is true or simply a malicious story put about by those who have been victims of his loose tongue is unknown but, in lieu of any visible means of support, the tale will persist. There is also a rumour that, once the day’s partying and networking is over, Samuel discreetly retires to a tent in Green Park, there to maintain a desirable central London residence on a decidedly lemonade budget. As with so much to do with Ordington-Mortimer, there is no evidence for this, but those who have seen him in the mornings occasionally note otherwise inexplicable strands of grass sticking to his immaculately cut, if rather too tight, jacket.
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