Como Lario is the perfect post-flower show venue

Even my most ardent champion would admit that my nature is sometimes unpredictable. Some think it's a vice - particularly if it's a thinly veiled excuse for being late for an appointment - but I think it's a virtue.

In PR it's good to keep people guessing, never knowing quite where you're coming from. Certainly, during my time at the Palace, it was an invaluable tool in the back-protection armoury; if the courtiers can't predict your next move, they can't thwart it.

But there is one point in the year when I like to shed this mantle and grab custom, tradition and predictability with both hands - and that surrounds the stately rituals of spring and summer: Wimbledon, Henley Royal Regatta, Glyndebourne and The Proms. They are all wonderful parts of the fabric of a British summer (when we get one), and punctuate it like a perfect metronome beat.

There is one particular ritual that I prize hugely as the start of the season and that is the Chelsea Flower Show. It's a remarkable, eccentric, sometimes bizarre, but thoroughly English occasion.

In the last few years, when all things traditional have been sneered at - or fallen victim to political correctness (even the dear old Proms) - Chelsea's popularity seems to grow and grow. Tickets are like gold dust. The business and media worlds turn out in force. And not even torrential rain can provide a damper. Last year, I left there a sodden wreck - not from the champagne - but still loved every minute of it.

After such an assault on the senses, what I usually want is a good supper close by. That's why Como Lario makes the perfect post-flower-show venue. Guy and I first ate there nearly 20 years ago. On that occasion, there was much excitement because

Captain Peacock - a comedy legend in our household - was sitting at the next table.

On the street where it sits, there is nothing to distinguish Como Lario from the outside - its bloom has faded to near invisibility. You could easily pass by without noticing it was there; it's the Alistair Darling of restaurants.

But why advertise when you don't need to? For inside it's a completely different matter. The place starts buzzing from the moment the doors open. Staffed by efficient, ageless waiters with doleful eyes, it's supervised by a patron you sense has seen human nature in all its guises - a worldliness that is reflected in the framed black and white photos.

A young Michael Caine. An eerie Alfred Hitchcock. And several shots of Maria Callas, bursting with all that talent underpinned by neurosis.

I'd taken a philanthropic friend and she sat blinking at the walls with the delight of a lottery winner. Tables are jammed into every available space. We munched on cigarillo-slim bread sticks and olives as fleshy as Marilyn Monroe's lips as we watched the Chelsea mob arrive. There are the usual waferthin doyennes and loafer-shod men in striped shirts, but the wide age range tells you that this is a long-established and favoured venue. It's easy to see why.