Lady B with one of her stable of vintage cars, a 1941 BuickI first met Lady Carole Banstead one sultry evening in the High Commissioner's garden in Accra, Ghana. It was 2005, and the night of the QBP (Queen's Birthday Party to non-champagne-swigging-diplomats). I had not long been in Ghana, where my husband Harold was posted as some kind of adviser. We were standing around sweating in our finery, our heels sinking into the lawn, clutching our one allocated drink (although I'm sure Her Ladyship had a top-up secreted in her voluminous handbag).
The local chiefs and their entourages had taken over the seating area on the verandah and the High Commission staff and their families were supposed to be acting as hosts, sacrificing the booze, food and chairs to our honoured guests. I was standing near the police band, trying to encourage them to play some Fela Kuti numbers, and chatting to a lovely suited, booted and dreadlocked young Ghanaian chap with a ganja plant motif on his tie - I was saying to him that hopefully the High Commissioner would have taken him for a representative of the Accra Horticultural Society - when Harold bumbled over and invited me to come and be presented to Lady Banstead.
She stood, framed in the light from the bar tent, a tiny figure in a smart and very expensive cocktail dress, unable to move, having become stuck in the lawn. Her radiant smile lit up the African night, and she greeted me graciously and warmly. "I've been so wanting to meet you!" she exclaimed. It was as if she already knew that we were going to become great friends. "Go and get me another large one, will you? I can't bleddywell move." When I asked her what her role at the High Commission was, she just muttered something about being embedded.
We exchanged pleasantries and stood to attention through both national anthems (we didn't really have much choice, as by now we were both stuck in the lawn), before agreeing to "do lunch" soon. We duly met a week or so later at the Golden Tulip Hotel, where we had a delightful lunch on the terrace by the pool. It was a tough life, in the harsh conditions of a diplomatic posting to West Africa. Lady B was on one of her periodic alcohol-free weeks for reasons of weight control, and our conversation was businesslike and friendly. On our second meeting, at a small Lebanese open-air bar in central Accra, she arrived at the appointed hour, knocked back four double vodkas in a row and nearly fell into a ditch on the way to the restaurant.
She became an invaluable friend, particularly during the dark days after Harold's demise. She helped me to organise his funeral and commission a special beer bottle shaped coffin for his last journey. I can now reveal that it was Lady B herself who put me in touch with the cargo ship captain who gave me a lift to Antwerp after the expense of Harold's funeral had ruined me. She had connections everywhere - in the rarified world of Ferrero Rochers that is the diplomatic service, as well as in the shadowy back alleys down by the docks - don't ask me how. Some say she was a secret agent. Some say she was Lord Lucan. All I know is, she was a damn good friend to me.
Some say she even worked for the BBCAs is now common knowledge, I landed on my feet in Brussels. Our contact was sporadic until Lord and Lady Banjo left Africa and returned to their ancestral pile in Milton-on-the-Keynes. Her Ladyship came late in life to the joys of the interwebs, but once I had persuaded her that her cover would not be blown if she joined Facebook, she took to it like a duck to water. Perhaps water is not the most appropriate word in her case. Like Schweppes tonic to Beefeater gin, then. It was a bit like "A star is born". She soon outstripped my paltry number of FB Friends and was brightening the lives of strangers far and wide. Her sunny nature and ready wit managed to travel through the ether and she became an internet sensation.
She had an enormous appetite for everything - adrenaline, as well as alcohol and cigarettes. She had been a qualified dive master during her days in the tropics, in Ghana she attended a high-energy African dance class, and on her return to Blighty she was an assiduous karateka, changing belt colours every week it would seem, roaring up the ranks as fast as Sensei could train her. Her daily visits to the gym were recounted in hilarious detail. Spincycling, step, weights, power walking .... she knew no pain, whereas I renounced my gym membership after two months of gruesome agony - and that was only in the changing rooms.
In her dotage, her faithful old retainer, Bill Casper, assisted her with technicalities such as slicing lemons, while Lord Banjo was away on various fact-finding missions to Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. When her health started to fail, her young physician, Dr East, was up and down the M1 like a tart's knickers to attend to her every need, such was the devotion inspired by this remarkable woman.
On her penultimate voyage, to the Caribbean on a cruise ship, she was accompanied by Lord Banjo and 100 of her closest friends, and eclipsed the ship's resident celebrity Lionel Blair with her wheelies and spins on the vehicle henceforth to be ever known as a Banjobile. Many an expert has tried, and failed, to work out how she got it to do such versatile tricks.
She was generous to a fault and among the many glasses raised in tribute to her, several of them were filled with the contents of her wine cellar. Although we will miss her, we must feel grateful and honoured that our lives were touched, even if only briefly, by such a remarkable woman. Tributes have poured in from around the world, from friends and admirers, nonentities and celebrities alike.
"We would have been the next Fred and Ginger," said a distraught Lionel Blair
Gawd bless her, and all who sailed with her.
