Sir Raymond "Beefy" Bastable, 52, half-brother to Lady Ickenham and brother of Phoebe Wisdom, who keeps house for him in Cocktail Time; a stout, florid man who played rugby for Oxford thirty years ago, now an eminent barrister, Queen's Counsel and member of the Demosthenes club across the street from the Drones. Writes a novel Cocktail Time under the pseudonym Richard Blunt.

• Cocktail Time