The Diary: Gentleman’s Journal and Audemars Piguet celebrate their long-standing collaboration, at AP London

A number of old friends flocked to Mayfair, for a highly entertaining dinner party full of punchy martinis and seemingly bottomless negronis

Words: Joseph Bullmore

On Thursday night, with the spectre of Halloween looming upon the horizon, Gentleman’s Journal and Audemars Piguet invited a number of old friends to AP House, in Mayfair, for a distinctly un-scary and highly entertaining dinner party. The evening was put on in celebration of Gentleman’s Journal and Audemars Piguet’s long-standing relationship as the magazine reaches its (admittedly quite scary) tenth birthday, in November — and it was a wonderfully intimate precis to a series of events over the coming weeks.

Guests — including Francis Bourgeois, Che Lingo, Jonah Hauer-King, Alex Heerema, Henry Hales, and James D Kelly — enjoyed suitably punchy martinis and seemingly bottomless negronis, all prepared at Audemars Piguet’s thoroughly well-stocked in-house bar. Black miso cod and a hefty chocolate nemesis cake rounded out proceedings, but not before virtuoso pianist Cyril Ibrahim, who had insisted he would do nothing of the sort, sat down at the stool of the Steinway grand and began to play — a rare delight to cap off an evening of rare delights.

Black-and-white imagery: James D Kelly, Colour imagery: Hubert Cecil