Hugh Phillimore, Oxfordshire-based music promoter, artist manager, and the man behind the county’s annual Cornbury Festival, talks about life at the cutting edge of the music industry... THE world of party entertainment is a very strange one. Well, the part I seem to have ended up in is nothing if not varied. What I do may seem extraordinary now, although I’m sure the great entertainers of their day have always performed for kings, queens, and the rich and famous.

In fact, one of the reasons I started Sound Advice, my booking company, was that I’d heard that, before he was famous as a comedian and actor, Dudley Moore used to play the fashionable Chelsea cocktail parties as the Dudley Moore Trio.

The Rolling Stones and Beatles both once played the same year at St John’s College, Cambridge, as part of the Summer Ball.

Thus, at recent private events we’ve supplied the legendary popstar and gentleman Lionel Richie, the very entertaining Will Young and the more obscure if equally danceable Orchestra Baobab – who fuse intoxicating latin rhythms with their original Malian sound.

We are now embarking on producing a classical spectacular for a corporate anniversary with the talented and charming Faryl, juxtaposed with the more raunchy semi-clad Bond. It should make for a rather interesting cabaret.

We’re also embroiled in a mix of confusing requests for a Bond-themed event in some way-off corner of the former Eastern Bloc. Can we really mix an Italian mime artist, the Sugababes and a sultry Swiss chanteuse with a cameo appearance from Pierce Brosnan? Of course we can – just full payment up-front may be wise. I’m no longer surprised by the requests we receive after 30 years in this ridiculous business, but I do pinch myself regularly after some of the events we produce.

More often than not I feel very privileged to have worked with some amazing performers – to have spent time with the great Eartha Kitt was simply extraordinary in itself.

But actually sometimes I’m more surprised by the clients themselves.

One recent host was thrilled at his continuing ability (at his 60th birthday) to run the full length of the dining table laid for 100, without injury or breakage.

I also have a clear memory of being challenged to a fight by an angry nonagenarian at an SAS anniversary party, as I refused to turn down the volume of The Temptations who were entertaining the majority.

I think a favourite mistake was trying to restrain a drunken Serbian uncle at a Russian wedding who, having stolen the superstar performer’s microphone, was killing the party with several choruses of the Serbian National Anthem. As he swung at me wildly, he was suddenly rendered quietly unconscious by a simple squeeze of some vital artery from a dark-suited apparatchik with advanced defence skills. Lovely party.