Margo, companion in Regent's Park

About Margo

Poise is the word people reach for, and Margo has been hearing it long enough to find it funny. Slim and 166 cm, she keeps her long dark brown hair straight, and her brown eyes give away nothing at all until she decides otherwise. She dresses with a certain formality, in clothes that hold their shape through a whole evening, and she carries a wrap in summer because she knows what the park does to the temperature after ten. At thirty one she is the most self possessed woman here, and she has no interest whatsoever in proving it.

In conversation she is dry, well read and occasionally wicked, with a timing that only shows up once you have relaxed. She has English and no other, and she uses it with an editor's precision, disliking a lazy adjective on principle. Gardens and theatre are her two subjects, and she can connect them at length: what a planted border and a staged scene have in common, why both are ruined by too much light. She is excellent company for somebody who wants to be talked with rather than talked at.

From late spring her evening is the Open Air Theatre on the Inner Circle, a fifteen minute walk in from Baker Street through the rose beds, where the plays run against real birdsong and the occasional aeroplane. She comes across from Knightsbridge, twenty minutes on a quiet evening and a great deal longer when the Marylebone Road decides otherwise, so she travels early and waits in the gardens rather than arriving flustered. After the curtain the park empties fast and the walk out through the gates is one of the quietest in central London.

A month away has not stopped November filling, so write to the evening desk early if a particular week matters to you. Whatever is on under the trees by then, Margo will know; the terraces, the gates and the hotels along the outer edge are on the Regent's Park page.

Asking for her

Margo books the park theatre evenings herself in the season and asks for a week of notice when she does. Outside the summer she prefers a dinner date at £900, starting early enough to walk in through the gardens first.

Every figure she works to is already public on the board, and the order of the evening is set out on the booking page.

An evening with Margo

Seven in June, the light still high, and Margo waiting near the rose garden where the scent is frankly excessive. She will walk you round the beds for twenty minutes and name half of them, then stop pretending to know the rest. There is a drink before the show and a wrap in her bag, because the temperature drops the moment the sun goes behind the trees.

The play runs against a soundtrack of birds settling and the last flights going over. At the interval she is properly critical and very funny about it. Afterwards the crowd disperses through the gates in a few minutes and the Inner Circle goes quiet, which is when she likes it best and when she will suggest the long way round to wherever you are staying.