Raise your glasses for one final long, long lunch in Fleet Street

A day in the late 1970s. Sunday Mirror newsroom at Holborn Circus. It’s 6pm and sports editor Tony Smith enters, broad smile. Reporter Vic Sims looks up from his typewriter.

Tony: So Vic, I’m just back from lunch. Is this a record?

Vic: Six o’clock. I don’t think so. When did you go out?

Tony: One o’clock (pause)... yesterday.

There are are plenty of similar stories about long lunches in those bygone days of Fleet Street, which we of a certain age remember with such affection.

Now, with the departure of the last two remaining journalists from the street of a thousand dreams*, the London Press Club is marking the historic milestone by staging a special long lunch.

By the standards of Tony Smith (and Private Eye’s Lunchtime O’Booze), midday until 5pm may not rank as exceptional. But it’s quite long enough to capture the spirit of those marathon drinking sessions (when food was always optional).

So prepare to raise your glasses for The Long Lunch - a fitting farewell to Fleet Street on Friday 2 December at the Punch Tavern (99 Fleet Street for those who might have forgotten).

Invited journalists will join club members for this homage to old Fleet Street. And, due to sponsorship by Associated British Ports, the buffet lunch and the open bar - yes, open bar - will cost just £15 a head.

Tickets will be allocated on a first come first served basis and can be booked here.

*In July, Gavin Sherriff and Darryl Smith became the last reporters to leave Fleet Street when the Dundee-based Sunday Post relocated them.