Fiona was in the middle of her usual rant about how Tori Amos stole her thunder and how “Me and a Gun” had been her idea for years; how she had a list of perfect words to rhyme with “rape”… blah blah blah… The rest of us kind of tune her out when she gets like that.
Suddenly, I started choking on my poppyseed rugelach (they make it so dry!) and Fiona starts yelling for help while Bob just kind of zones out and watches – so typical, he’s never sure what’s actually happening in front of him or whether it’s a flashback of some kind. Rupert was the only one to have the sense to give me the Heimlich Maneuver. It worked, and the buttery crust that deemed to kill me coughed out like a cannonball and hit the back of the head of some trollop du jour that Hugh Grant was treating to a Marilyn Monroe Special.
We’d all been avoiding making eye-contact with Hugh because, at the slightest provocation he’ll bore you to death with some complaint about “ladies and their oral hygiene". I mean, honestly Hugh, we know you’re European but you CAN kiss on the cheek to greet people – you don’t have to go plugging your tongue in like a hose to a Hoover.
It was awkward because Rupert and Hugh have a long-standing grudge between them. Something to do with a game of capture-the-flag at Julia Roberts’ house that took a turn for the ugly.