A prisoner with the bright young(ish) things

Where exactly is Portmeirion? When I was invited to speak at the Editorial Intelligence annual symposium, Names not Numbers, in north Wales, I realised it was the village where the cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner was filmed. Patrick McGoohan’s anguished refrain was “I am not a number, I am a free man.” Even so, I still had to look up the location and was left wondering how I would survive a whole weekend miles from the nearest Starbucks. I was told that most of those attending (including Annie Lennox, it turned out) were travelling by coach. Coach? I don’t think so. Even if Annie Lennox was doing it. Even if it was a luxury coach. I don’t care. I don’t do coaches, and I especially don’t do them for seven-hour journeys to north Wales.

So I flew to Caernarfon Airport instead, which took an hour from Oxford. I am getting the hang of flying to most places these days. I even flew myself (with some help) to Brussels the other day. Brussels is great. Air traffic controllers with very sexy foreign accents, three huge runways and very efficient general aviation handling.

No sexy air traffic controllers’ accents in Wales, sadly, but continental Europe was nonetheless well represented among the 120 people gathered in Portmeirion. Alain de Botton, the Swiss writer and philosopher, and a 1969 baby, was the opening speaker. He has written several books, one titled Essays in Love. I have it on excellent authority from a fellow Portmeirion delegate that if you are male, this makes a very handy gift to girls that you hope to seduce, since it makes you look like an intellectual. De Botton himself has a double starred first from Cambridge, and so doesn’t have to try to look like an intellectual. Following our return from Portmeirion, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. I take it that the two events are not related, since the WEF also named an eclectic group of people ranging from de Botton’s fellow Swiss, Roger Federer, to Stella McCartney. At almost 48, I’m much too old to be a YGL. They are chosen each year by a panel currently chaired by Queen Rania of Jordan. I wonder whether she has read Essays in Love?

What I quickly realised while marooned at Portmeirion was that everyone there was cleverer than me, and most were also younger. There is nothing like feeling old and stupid to depress one, and I could not even seek solace in caffeine. The speaker before my session was Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor twice over in both history and management. I learnt a few things from his session. First, he’s better looking in the flesh than on TV. Second, he is an almost impossible act to follow on stage. And third, he is – yes, you guessed it – younger and cleverer than me. He is 45 and has a first-class honours degree from Oxford.

The weekend finished off with Stephen Sackur (46 and Cambridge) interviewing Annie Lennox for his BBC programme Hardtalk about her life, music and the causes she espouses but not, I noticed, about the coach ride to Wales. I happen to know that on the way to Portmeirion she sat opposite the only chartered accountant on the trip. Asked afterwards by his wife what Lennox had been wearing, he was at a loss, despite having had seven hours to gather the information. Even I now have to admit that accountants are not the answer to all the questions life poses.

Weekend symposia that require me to live in close proximity to lots of clever people and engage in debate with them are, at their best, intellectual Viagra. At their worst, they are an opportunity to see how other people dress, drink and dine. One of the few people in Portmeirion who was older than me even licked his knife during dinner, which finally gave me a feeling of some self-worth. I might be old and stupid, but I still have my table manners intact. And now I know where Portmeirion is, too.

mrsmoneypenny@ft.com