The Victoria and Albert Museum kindly threw me a leaving party after eight years as chair, plus a particularly apt present: a specially commissioned illuminated V&A logo made from powder-coated steel by the designer Toby Albrow. The logo is a reference to my megalomaniacal taste for giant logos atop museum buildings. We have placed a huge one on the roof of the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, and an even bigger one – 20 feet high – on the new V&A East in Stratford, visible from three miles away in Canary Wharf. What an exhilarating and happy gig the V&A has been. I’m going to miss it and the people. They hung my leaving portrait in the directorate corridor six weeks early, just to remind me it was over.

My attentive bank manager alerted me that ‘Barclays head office is currently investigating you as a potential PEP’. It seemed most unlikely; I’m not in any way a Politically Exposed Person. PEPs are supposed to be Colombian drug barons or Russian money launderers, – why would my high street bank of 50 years be investigating me? It had a sinister Nigel Farage vibe to it. My manager wondered: ‘Do you know any MPs or have you ever met an MP in the past? That can leave you open to bribery.’ Nothing more was heard for a month, until I was told: ‘The appeal process is progressing. The issue seems to be your chairmanship of the V&A, which they believe was an appointment by the prime minister.’ It was a red flag, apparently. How very surreal. In earlier days, your bank might have invited you to a slap-up boardroom lunch in their City HQ as chair of a national museum. Now you’re lumped in with sanction-busters. I hope they never discover I’ve become chair of Historic Royal Palaces, a royal appointment.

The news that many suitors are jockeying to acquire The Spectator reminds me of my own failed attempt to buy it for Condé Nast. For six weeks we worked intensely on business plans before offering £20 million, precisely four times what our bean counters reckoned was a fair price at the time. It was sold instead as part of the Telegraph group to the Barclay family. Not long after, I saw Aidan and Howard Barclay at the Ritz. ‘You guys were keen to buy The Spectator, weren’t you?’ asked Aidan. ‘Lazard told me that.’ ‘We were – and are,’ I replied. ‘It’s funny about The Spectator,’ Aidan said. ‘I hadn’t heard of that one when we bought it. It hadn’t ever crossed my radar. But afterwards I discovered quite a few of our friends read it, they say it’s quite interesting. They take it.’

Like Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk, I am a ChatGPT enthusiast. ‘Name five books Enid Blyton might have written in her Famous Five series but didn’t?’ Three seconds later: ‘Five and the Haunted Lighthouse, Five on the Treasure Trail, Five and the Midnight Train Mystery, Five and the Secret Code, Five and the Phantom Shipwreck.’ Pretty good. Next question: ‘Name Nicholas Coleridge’s five best books?’ Instant chatbot answer: ‘Godchildren, The Ornamental Gardens of Louis XV, A Much Married Man, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: a single mother’s relationship with her autistic son, The Fashion Conspiracy.’ Readers can decide which two I didn’t write. Where ChatGPT scores strongest is in lyric writing, its suggestions up there with Loudon Wainwright III and Mike Barron from Madness. ‘Write lyrics beginning with the line “My boyfriend chucked me at the service station”.’ Two seconds later: ‘He did it with no explanation/He said I’m fed up with you bitch/If you wanna go home you’ll have to hitch.’

I am literally going back to school next September, as the 43rd Provost of Eton. Exactly like an ambassador with a new posting, you don’t get to see the living accommodation until after you’ve got the job. It felt strangely impertinent to be venturing upstairs in the Provost’s Lodge to inspect bedrooms and bathrooms. It is Tudor and civilised. But, like the archaeological layers of Troy, the interior has vestiges of all previous Provosts – Sir Antony Acland’s wallpaper, Lord Charteris’s bedside rug and so on, with dashing recent additions by the Waldegraves.

What is the etiquette on clapping after eulogies at memorial services? At Mary Quant’s service at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court, a first-rate eulogy by Jasper Conran was met with a few exploratory handclaps which grew into a tumult of applause. Recently, clapping seems to be obligatory, regardless of whether or not the eulogy was any good. Perhaps it is the deceased we are applauding? And should we now also clap sermons?