“We are immensely grateful,” said the man from the Foreign Office, “for letting us host this event here.” When you looked round the room, you could see why. There were young black men and women, in suits and smart dresses, young brown men and women, in suits and long robes, and young white men and women in suits and summer frocks.

On Thursday night, Lenny Henry made me cry. I don’t know if he meant to, but he did. He used to try to make people laugh, but he wasn’t always good at it. It’s hard to make people laugh. You have to feel that the person who’s trying to do it isn’t trying too hard. I don’t know if Lenny Henry was trying, on Thursday night, to make a theatre full of people cry.

Last week, I had an email from a reader. When I say a reader, I mean a reader, or perhaps I should say a former reader, of The Independent. He’s one of a number of readers who have been emailing me for years.