Orchestral manoeuvres in the dark

I AM awake at 5.30am having slept fitfully.I am more nervous about this interview, though, than the event itself. The Cateys are tried and tested - I've worked on them for four years and have run them as the account manager for the past three.

I am in the hotel by 6.30am, having caught the bus in, as usual, from Camden, north London. I immediately check that the crew building the set in the Great Room is in and working. We had no function here last night, so they were able to get in at midnight - it has been much later in past years.

I check that they are all happy and being kept fed and watered. A happy crew equals a happy job.

I get on with some paperwork in my office until the director of conference and banqueting, John Prior, arrives at 7.30am. We discuss how the day is going to proceed.

My immediate team, who have been working closely with me on the Cateys, then start arriving - my assistant Greta Pisternick, together with Heather Little and Wenche Tommerhol were particularly keen to work on the event. The Cateys is a prestigious function for staff to work on - they know that the eyes of all the most prominent people in the industry will be upon them.

I am in and out of meetings all morning. First, there is the daily meeting for all conference and banqueting managers - a good opportunity to communicate with each other about the day's events.

The Cateys is obviously the main event of the day, although we also have 13 small functions in 86 Park Lane, as well as a private dinner for 140 in Café Nico.

At 9.30am I meet with all the departmental heads, including the executive director Paolo Biscioni, then go into a conference and banqueting operations meeting.

After discussing business for the forthcoming two weeks, we get on to the specifics of the Cateys. I highlight some of the details from our four-page bible for the event and we have an update of last-minute table changes that had been faxed to us last night from Caterer & Hotelkeeper's offices.

The number of pre-booked vegetarians we have at this stage is only 26, which is very low for a banquet of 865 covers. But we are well prepared for more that evening (and were easily able to cope with the 68 who eventually turned up). The highest number of vegetarians we ever did here was 322 for a 900-cover banquet; only 160 had pre-booked.

I then take a walk through the Great Room with the housekeeping staff to make sure all the cleaning, polishing and dusting has been taken care of. This is followed by a similar exercise with the technical services department which deals with the physical state of the building. A few repairs and paint jobs to be done before this evening are spotted.

I have an update with my immediate team and Richard Leigh, who is a trainee on a placement with us.

I delegate jobs for them to do and ask them to update me every couple of hours. I'm a bit like a conductor bringing together all parts of an orchestra to produce the symphony.

The Caterer team, including editor Forbes Mutch and group projects manager Jane Cartwright, arrive at 2.15pm. We have lunch together and catch up on last-minute changes. They are impressed with the way the room is looking, but concerned that three tables have a restricted view of the stage. We move 20 tables to solve the problem. And because the tables have been moved, the pinspot lighting for each table also has to be altered.

The "contemporary sophisticated" feel of the evening - with the black-and-white table settings and flowers - came from Caterer.

A final housekeeping check takes place before the choir, the Crouch End Festival Chorus, and the presenter for the awards ceremony, Sian Lloyd, come in for rehearsals.

At this stage the room is sealed down and no one is allowed in to disturb the performers.

At 4.30pm I hold a briefing with the wingers - the 19 room supervisors for the evening. These are people who work at management level throughout the hotel and their involvement in the Cateys is above and beyond the call of duty, but all were very keen to take part. For the next 80 minutes I run through the intricacies of the evening, from the moment the first guest arrives, through the service of the dinner and the exact positioning of each course on the plate.

Each winger is to be responsible for five waiting staff and four tables.

In no time at all the first guests arrive - at 6.37pm to be precise, eight minutes early. But we are ready. We receive a message that Oxford Street has been closed, which might delay the arrival of some guests. In fact, the guests arrive in a steady stream over the next 30 minutes or so.

First call for dinner is due at 7.15pm, but doesn't happen until 7.22pm. By the time all the guests are seated and Forbes begins his welcome speech it is 7.45pm - 15 minutes after he had been due to start. He knows we are running late and speeds things up a little, managing to claw back five minutes by the time dinner service starts at 8pm, 10 minutes behind schedule.

We let the kitchen know we are running late and they are able to delay service. Once dinner is called, we are in the hands of the guests and have to react accordingly. The return of plates to the kitchen is an excellent indication of how much a dinner is being enjoyed. The starter - tomato, courgette, aubergine and cod layers with a basil and caper dressing - undoubtedly goes down well: most plates come back clean.

The same can not be said of the soup - a chilled cream of mint and lime served in a teacup. It certainly raises a few eyebrows and provides a bit of a talking point. But at least it gets people thinking about using different ingredients.

And that is what the Cateys are about. It is an event where we like to be at the leading edge in the food that we serve, and we always like to come up with something different. That is why we chose to serve Norfolk pork this year, having served lamb last year and beef the year before. Pork is rarely served at premier banqueting venues, often because of religious considerations. I am keen on it, and think we made a superb statement by showing that it can be a tasty and clean meat.

The dish is definitely an overwhelming success - the guests seem to love the two fillets of pork served wrapped in smoked bacon with a smoked cream sauce, on a potato cake with prunes, accompanied by green beans and red cabbage.

Dessert follows - a caramelised mango with a coconut blancmange, which is again a little different.

During the service of dinner, John Prior and I circulate the room and keep in constant contact with Jane. The early part of the evening is always worrying for her as she can't be certain that all Catey winners have actually arrived and are sitting down. So I check, and reassure her that they are all in place.

Every year we try to come up with a different visual effect for the service of petits fours with coffee. In the past we've had pulled-sugar Catey statues, and on the occasion that we had an Oriental theme we used carved water melons. This year an 18in-diameter ice carving encasing an acetate Catey statue is placed on a dish of dry ice, on to which a plate of chocolates is served.

To be honest, the ice carvings are the one aspect of the whole evening that I would look at again. The idea is good, but the ice carvings have to be removed from the tables after about 15 minutes as they begin to melt.

Santé des chefs takes place at 10pm, 15 minutes later than planned. People are enjoying themselves and have taken longer over their meal, so service is slower than our timetable has allowed. The santé is done only if the audience has received the meal well, and they have - in fact, they have done at every Cateys I've been involved with, which is a great tribute to executive chef Charles Mercier and his team.

The start of the awards and the live entertainment follows, and is an opportunity for myself and the wingers to go up to the Green Room, sit down and enjoy the pork main course. The wingers then go home but, as the account manager responsible for the event, I stay until the bitter end, which means waiting until the last guest has left. This year some guests stay longer than usual - a sign that people are relaxed and having a good time.

Eventually the last guest says goodbye at 1.40am. I stay in the hotel that night as not only have I run the Cateys that day, but I have also been duty executive for the hotel from 9am the previous day. I get to bed at 3.15am. Overall, the day has been a great success and I'm proud that the Cateys have been held at the Grosvenor House. It's a huge hotel effort and I'm looking forward to the next one. not always mean y