HOW WE MET

REG GADNEY AND SIMON PARKER BOWLES

Reg Gadney, 57, was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards before going up to St Catherine's College, Cambridge. He taught at the Royal College of Art for 15 years, then became a full-time writer in 1984. His latest novel is The Achilles Heel. He lives in London with his wife, Fay Maschler, and has two children from a previous marriage. Simon Parker Bowles, 55, joined the Coldstream Guards straight from Eton, and then was a wine merchant for 20 years. Since 1981 he has owned Green's Oyster Bar and Restaurant in St James's. He is married, with two children, and also lives in London.

REG GADNEY: We met in the Cold-stream Guards at Victoria Barracks, Windsor. I was 21 and had just come back from Norway, where I'd been assistant military attache in the embassy. Life was rather dreary and then Simon appeared - a junior officer just out of Eton. He lit the place up. He was incredibly good-looking - he still is - with a huge smile. It was a tradition that new officers never talked for a month and were completely ignored - Simon talked to everybody.

What we liked about each other was that neither of us had any respect for authority whatsoever and we liked to make fun of people. We had a particularly ferocious adjutant called Captain Matthew Bull who wore a monocle, but I once caught him putting it in the eye that was perfectly all right. We were always trying to get him to sneeze and blow the monocle out. Another Guards officer, a Major Bedford-Russell, was a frightfully keen collector of butterflies, and he discovered that Matthew was allergic to butterflies. So Simon and I bought some second-hand butterflies with the idea of making Matthew sneeze and took bets on whether we could get his monocle to fall out. We sprinkled the butterflies round the drinks table in the officers' mess and it worked - he had a fit of sneezing and his monocle literally came out at 90 degrees!

Simon and I became very close during the summer of 1962. It was a golden summer and there was no war. We'd go for walks in the fields and go out in London; quite what the army thought it was doing I've absolutely no idea. Simon's brother Andrew, who was in the Blues, would come down to Victoria Barracks in his Aston Martin. He is the most delightful guy, as charming as his brother.

Towards the end of my career in the army, Simon and I got into terrible trouble. A parade coincided with Ascot and the whole of the Royal Family was going to be there. The Queen Mother had broken her ankle and was wheeled out early in a wheelchair to watch the parade. Simon and I were changing the guard and I gave a wrong order and everything went terribly wrong. The idea is that one guard goes off and one's left behind, but in fact we ended up following each other. There was a blazing row when we got back to barracks; but on my last night in the army the General came up to me and said, "After the parade, when you and Simon seemed to have not quite followed the rules, I got a message from the Queen Mother. She said how terribly nice it was to see the ceremony done differently."

After I left the regiment, Simon and I went our separate ways. I went to Cambridge and then to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Techno-logy]. We came together again, albeit at a distance, because I then taught the history of art at the Royal College of Art for 15 years. The link was someone called Beth Coventry, who worked for Simon for many years. Before that she worked for the Marquess of Queens- berry; he had been in the Blues and, like me, ended up at the RCA.

I didn't think Simon had changed at all, and although I hadn't seen him for a number of years, we fell right back into the way we were when we were Coldstreamers.

In recent years we've seen much more of each other because Simon is a very successful restaurateur and Fay Maschler, who is now my wife - and coincidentally Beth Coventry's sister - writes about restaurants. Both Fay and Beth adore Simon - when we were in the Coldstreams I never met a woman who didn't instantly fall in love with him. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky. I always had to work rather harder at it because, being flat- footed, I couldn't dance. But Simon can, and his brother Andrew is said to be one of the best dancers in England.

Simon and I both love cricket, but I go to cricket matches with my other great friend, the playwright David Hare - because Simon is a very solitary fellow who prefers to go on his own. Simon and his wife are crazy theatre- goers and David is always asking me what Simon thought of his plays.

One of Simon's hugely attractive traits is that he is extraordinarily tolerant, probably to the point of being too forgiving. Also, he is devoted to his family. He has a very seriously disabled relative whom they all look after in a really magnificent manner. I went to Simon's house for New Year; Andrew who was still with his wife Camilla was there, too. It was a very agreeable occasion, very pleasant, quiet and happy. Simon's disabled relative played the piano very touchingly. I love the way he takes part in family occassions - it is very moving.

SIMON PARKER BOWLES: My father said to me when I was about 16, "Right, when you leave school you're going into the army; and when you leave the army you are going to be a wine merchant." I had no desire to do either but you said, "Yes, thank you very much, father", and that was it. So I went into the Coldstream Guards and met Reg at Victoria Barracks in Windsor in 1961.

My total admiration for Reg was based on the fact that he knew Susannah York; it made him a very popular officer. Reg was the most unlikely Coldstream officer. He had a wonky eye, flat feet and painted in his room. It was a breath of fresh air to meet someone who was so different from one's preconceived ideas of what a Guards officer should be. We became friends because, within the bounds of doing our job, we treated the army as a big joke. I suppose we behaved badly, but not in a destructive way - if we could knock people off their pedestals, we did.

I remember the summer of 1962 at Windsor as being a good laugh. I used to smile to myself at night when we were sitting outside playing cards and getting pissed and one of the keen officers was saying, "God, I'm so bored. Did you hear there's a bit of action somewhere: do you think we'll be called up? Wouldn't it be fun?" I was having to say, "Oh God, yes", while dreading the thought of anything that bore any relation to being a soldier. And Reg was the same.

It was a gorgeous summer. We had a lot of freedom because we were doing what were called public duties and if you weren't actually doing them you were free. We went to London, of course, and my brother, who was in the Blues, used to come over to Victoria Barracks in his Aston Martin. On the back shelf, he had what seemed like hundreds of little things from Floris, the smellies shop. He said: "I'll give you a tip. When you go and stay a weekend with somebody, always take one of these and give it to the mother of the girl. You are absolutely guaranteed the girl is yours." I'm sure he's done it all his life - he always was a great one for impressing the parents. So I used to go out and buy Floris and put it in the back of my Morris Minor. Reg didn't follow Andrew's advice but he always had very exotic lady friends. We were very impressed because we couldn't understand how this one-eyed, flat-footed idiot could pull these wonderful-looking birds. We had to think it was his intellect because it wasn't anything else.

Reg left the army and I stayed on. I did a short service commission and went off to British Guiana where they had riots - the only action I ever saw. But a lot of the fun went out of the army, partly because we probably did have to take it a bit more seriously and partly because Reg wasn't there.

We became interlaced again through Beth Coventry, who had been secretary to David Queensberry and who then joined me at my restaurant, Green's, as head chef. Reg and I bumped into each other now and again, but we re- met on a more permanent basis about four years ago. Having lost touch with Reg and then rediscovered him, I wasn't at all surprised to hear that he was writing books. Of all the people I knew in the Guards, Reg was the most likely to become a best-selling author. I always slightly wondered what he was doing in the army, because he was artistic. While he was in the Guards, he painted a portrait of a man called Willie Rous who is now number two in the British Army.

Reg and I both have an ability to get on with anybody. Unlike a lot of my friends, who I think live in a fairly limited society and have friends who are from totally similar backgrounds, I have friends in show business and every walk of life. Reg is the same. We have no preconceived ideas about anybody. Reg and I have never rowed, even when we were in the army. People used to be pretty wary of Reg if he had had a few drinks and got into what I call horseplay; but I never got into a fight with Reg, I was too wise.

Now when we meet, we eat - obviously - drink, talk and laugh. I enjoy his books, particularly when he mentions me and Green's as he does in his latest novel - page 96, I think it is. !