On another occasion, he found where I was holding my 50th birthday bash and, to sully the ambience, booked an all-male strip troupe ***who frolicked around me dressed as American cops even though the theme was Louis XIV and Noel knew that.
*** - Doubly insulting was the fact that he had tracked down and hired Hot Pants, the very dance troupe I had erroneously invited on to my television chat show years earlier, having not realised that they were male exotic dancers and therefore totally inappropriate for a (predominantly) straight audience. The oversight had caused a stink among BBC top brass and not a little embarrassment to yours truly, which Edmonds knew full well. And there they were suggestively waggling truncheons (both types) in my face as I sat in my hired finery.
Side note: now older, wiser and saggier, Hot Pants still perform today but currently trade under the name Rs, purportedly because their members Ruud, Reggie, Rowan, Rory and Raffy all share that initial, but more likely because Rs sounds like arse and, as gay men, they find this amusing, a theory supported by their promotional material, which features a photograph of them in leather chaps, all pointing at their own buttocks and pouting. I bet Edmonds finds them hilarious.
