Chuckers make me sick

Rachel Johnson names the people who never turn up to parties (and those who always do)

Is it just me, or has there been a perceptible rise in social autism recently? Not just couples walking down the street shouting into their mobiles, people texting at table, not thanking, and so on, but also this endemic lack of compunction about not showing up.

Indeed, I'm beginning to think that men divide not into showers and growers — work it out — but into `chuckers' and 'turneruppers' (and I am confining myself to men because women tend to be more dutiful and less certain of their own importance).

Of course there are many more turneruppers than there are chuckers, but it did not take the sublime no-show of Charles Saatchi at his own gallery premiere last year to tell us that those who hold themselves in the highest regard are also the least likely to turn up. It's one thing, though, not to attend your own parties (and Patrick Bishop, the writer, was a notable absence at his own Christmas party as he had the pressing business of Saddam's unearthing in a foxhole to attend to instead); not showing at other people's is another thing entirely.

And there's a lot of it about. 'There are an awful lot of sick children and dying grandmothers in London at the moment,' Lady Elizabeth Anson of Party Planners in Ladbroke Grove observes, which is not really surprising as you cannot exactly wriggle out of a dinner party by explaining you have received a subsequent glitzier invitation, which would make you what New Yorkers call a BBD, the name for someone who is prone to jack for a Bigger Better Deal.

David Yelland, the former editor of the Sun, says you can get away with this only if the person you are chucking your previous invitation for is a personage of intergalactic importance, and gives as an example the time he stood up his boss (R. Murdoch) to obey a last-minute summons from Downing Street to go to lunch with T. Blair. (Murdoch kept calling Yelland on his mobile to ask what everyone was saying, much as Charles monitored his own party at the Saatchi Gallery from the home comforts of Eaton Square.)

But in the good old days, I am told, once you had accepted one invitation you were honour-bound to go, and the only person you could chuck for was the Queen, whose invitations used to 'command' one to attend. How quaint and courtly that sounds! Nowadays the Queen commands the Master of the Household to invite you, which is slightly less imperious, and people chuck for the slightest reason and are terrible about replying. They have heard that Y is giving a party on the same night that they're waiting to be invited to before committing to X's. As for cocktail, publishing or corporate parties, hardly anyone replies at all. Even though Lady Elizabeth invented ('to my chagrin', as she says) the enclosed reply slip to defeat the fell purposes of those hoping to keep their options open, and encourage people to RSVP early, this has not been as effective as she hoped. 'There are people — and I am not naming names — whom one invites to a seated dinner, with a printed table plan, and as the hour draws near I just wait for the call saying they can't make it,' she says. 'So we've stopped printing table plans in advance, and we now have magnetic boards with pink and blue strips, so we can completely reshuffle it at the last minute. I call them people who are not safe to be invited to a seated dinner, like Not Safe in Taxis.'

In fact, people are becoming so goddam casual about invitations that anyone who gives a party subjects themselves to a nerve-shredding experience, because they have absolutely no idea of numbers at all (so the catering is up the spout) or who is going to be there. 'It reminds me of when I came out, in the Dark Ages,' sighs Lady E. 'There could be up to three balls a night, all with much the same guest list, and hostesses would get so frantic they would lay on coaches so that we could be ferried between the Savoy and Claridge's, and just hope that the ballroom would not be completely empty of Delights while their entire party was in transit.'

But it's not just London's hostesses who deserve our pity; pity anyone who has to organise anything, because you never know whether big names are going to turn up or not. Peter Florence, the organiser of the Hay Festival, reports that if you liaise with people properly for months they almost never chuck. But he also tells rueful stories about writers who have been booked for six months who ring up to say, 'I've got a really creative spurt on and can't leave my computer,' and expect him to congratulate them; and about the famous no-show perpetrated on a restive audience of 1,100 by David Starkey, who arrived at the festival

an hour late, after Florence had resorted to handing out free copies of the latest Starkey book. 'He came out with his hands up and said he had made a terrible mistake,' says Florence. `He'd misread 13.00 hours as 3 p.m. on his schedule and offered to reimburse everyone out of his own pocket.'

The most famous Hay threatened noshow was Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer and politician, who had been booked for months to debate Madame Bowl", with Julian Barnes one Friday at 4 p.m., but rather thought he would dine with the mayor of Madrid that night instead, and so called to chuck — after 900 people had bought tickets.

'It was desperate,' recalls Florence. 'I knew we could never get him back to Madrid on scheduled flights in time, so I ended up borrowing Bernard Ashley's helicopter. The only place it could land in Hay was on the cricket pitch, and I remember Vargas Llosa kept it hovering because he said it couldn't land until the end of the over.'

David Starkey's name also came up with Ion Trewin, the editor of the Alan Clark Diaries and chairman of the Cheltenham Literary Festival. 'He didn't take part in a debate at the last moment,' Trewin tells me. 'We never get this with struggling young authors, I've noticed.'

As for politicians, they have the worst reputations of all. The second time Roy Hattersley failed to show up on the set of Have I Got News For You, he was replaced by a tub of lard. Charles Kennedy and Shirley Williams and our very own Boris Johnson have possibly undeserved reputations for turning up late (or, er, not at all). Robin Cook, as shadow foreign secretary, cancelled an interview with an ITN reporter that had been booked for weeks. He cancelled on the day of the interview, and rescheduled for six months later. When the appointed day rolled round, he cancelled it again, and his secretary rescheduled, only to cancel a third time, again on the day. 'I was actually offered yet another date, again in six months time and I said "no thanks" at that point,' says James Mates of ITN. 'We were interested, but not that interested.'

Bill Clinton, of course, was a famous noshower, and the entire White House ran on Clinton time, which meant, well, whenever. George W. Bush, on the other hand, has made a virtue of military timekeeping as a way of communicating his egalitarian belief that just because he's POTUS, it doesn't mean his time is more important than anyone else's (and this overcompensation extends not only to showing up to everything early, but also to gatecrashing things he's not invited to, like Thanksgiving dinner on airbases in Iraq).

But Bush isn't like most politicians, of whom the best you can expect is to be economical with their excuses when they do, inevitably, chuck. After all, even Tories have

heavy schedules, with up to three things in I the diary per night, a routine that would lead the most sociable of butterflies to plead that they had a prior engagement with their TVs. So, according to Anne Jenkin, the influential Tory wife of Bernard Jenkin MP, the way they survive is to promise only to 'look in' rather than attend some function in the Palace of Westminster, and, if pushed to make a speech, make a vague promise to 'say a few words'.

Which brings us to the turner-uppers. Among politicians, the indefatigable Jeffrey Archer stands out. Tessa Jowell shows up, as do Blunkett, Portillo and Prescott. Then there are the persistent attenders: men-about-town Nicicy Haslam, Taki, Charlie Glass, and the architect Tchaik. Among media folk, Alan Rusbridger, Charles Moore and Nicholas Coleridge are — if they have accepted — excellent turner-uppers, wonderful company and always thank. Andrew Motion shows up, even to sink secondary schools in grim bits of north London. I am reliably informed, to explain his muse to yoof. So well done to all of them, but the ultimate accolade must go to the royal family, who turn up for Britain.

As for chucking — and this is beginning to read like a Taller article, so I must get on! — well, after much hesitation, I reluctantly nominate the delightful Sir Trevor McDonald, for a chuck on an ocean-going scale. His citation is for the time he was invited to return to a childhood place he loved for a piece in the Mail. He chose Grenada, in the West Indies (well, wouldn't you?) The Mail gulped, but gave the thumbs-up. So it was organised for my friend Candida Crewe, the writer, and a photographer, and Sir Trevor and his wife to fly to Grenada for the purposes of this sentimental journey. Owing to ticketing constraints, Candida and the snapper had to leave the day before, so they flew longhaul economy to Grenada and checked into their hotel to await the arrival by first class the following day of the McDonalds.

A few hours later, the telephone rang. It was the Daily Mail features desk to tell them that Trevor wasn't feeling well — a touch of flu — and wouldn't be coming after all. (Which all goes to show, in my book, that the men you most want to see are unreliable chuckers rather than dutiful turner-uppers.) Weil, at least he bothered to ring.