Drawing inspiration

Quentin Blake was ten minutes into a chirpy monologue about who inspires him as an illustrator when something occurred to me: with his small, bird-like features, wispy hair and lively eyebrows, he looked not a little like the people he draws (self-portrait, above; portrait, below by Eamonn McCabe).

I cast my eyes across the rest of the panel taking part in the talk at the British Library –illustrators and cartoonists, Posy Simmonds, Martin Rowson and Jamie Hewlett. Simmonds had the soft, open features and grace of her Tamara Drewe and Gemma Bovary characters; Hewlett, the cheeky, boyish grin of the Gorillaz crew, below (and see him speak briefly here).

Do people who spend their lives creating other people turn to the most obvious person for inspiration – themselves – even if it's subconscious?

My theory, of course, ended with Rowson, a brilliant "visual journalist" whose intricate, political cartoons resemble modern-day Hogarth but look nothing like him. Hey ho.

I adored Blake as a child, never sure if it was his drawings, or Roald Dahl's words, that I loved best. So it was fascinating to discover who inspired him: turns out, he was not alone in his idolatry of Ronald Searle, who died last December (below). "The Godfather," said Blake. "He had the best line," said Rowson (it's a drawing thing). "The greatest illustrator of all time," said Hewlett. "He has completely inspired me all my life."

Hewlett, Blake, Simmonds and Rowson were intelligent, funny and generous, and gave the impression that being an illustrator is an extremely rewarding way to spend your life. It worked for Searle, too: he lived in France, with the woman he loved, and drank champagne every day. As Hewlett said: "What's not to admire?"

Encounters: concert

It sounded like a skit from a Woody Allen film:

First man: Are you ready for the next instalment of the tragedy on Sunday?

Second man: Götterdämmerung?

First man: No, Tottenham.

Half the fun in going to a big classical concert – and with André Previn and Anne-Sophie Mutter playing (at the Barbican on Monday) they don't come much bigger – is people watching. It's a great tradition: they did it in all the grand opera houses in Europe.

The people in our row didn't disappoint. The conversation above was between a well-heeled man a few seats down, and a well-heeled friend he met in the aisle. One, fittingly, had a touch of Alan Sugar about him, only with a German accent. The other seemed to know everyone.

But it was their women-folk who were the most jaw-dropping. Hair was expensive, dyed just the right tawny shade, tonged and set with so much hairspray it shimmered. Clothes were showy and tight; jewellery, ostentatious. Faces were taut with Botox, but captivating. And best of all were the accents: exotic Anglo-Euro-German, the voice of a 60s Bond girl.

I don't doubt they were enjoying the music. But as they settled into their seats for the second half, dinner plans were already being urgently discussed. I thought of the sandwich I'd wolfed down before the concert, and vowed, one day, to be this glamorous.

Encounters: loss

The cheese straws I manufactured yesterday morning in catering quantities – for a Christmas soiree – were a little saltier than they should have been. I was listening to journalist Eve Pollard on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, and moved to tears more than once.

Her parents fled Vienna in the 1930s, but her grandparents died in a concentration camp. Her mother could never speak about them. When the war was over, she had the chance to visit Vienna, but couldn't do it. Jews' houses were routinely looted when they were deported, and she told her daughter she couldn't bear to see another woman wearing her jewellery. It was a small personal detail – a story I'd never heard before – that revealed so much about the lives of ordinary people at the time.

Pollard dedicated one of her songs, the beautiful aria "O mio babbino caro" ("Oh my beloved Father") by Puccini, to her mother, who would listen to it quietly, lost in memories of her Dad.

Like I said, salty cheese straws.

Swingers

Envy, I suspect, lies behind my irritation at those 60s icons – David Bailey, Michael Caine, Terence Stamp, Twiggy, any Beatle or Stone you care to name – who are forever saying how exciting it was, how young they were, how they didn't have a clue what they were doing, they just made it up as they went along – how, at any moment, it could disappear in a puff of marijuana smoke. It all sounds so much fun.

Photographer Terry O'Neill, who I interviewed for last Saturday's magazine, was bang slap in the right place at the right time. An eastender like Caine and Bailey, he stumbled into photography by accident. He was picked up in the early 60s by the Daily Sketch, which was after a young snapper to dispatch to the darker corners of London in search of those making the capital swing. The next oldest photographer on Fleet Street was 31 – a dinosaur.

He photographed the Beatles, the Stones (below), the lot – his informal, on the hoof style suiting these equally establishment-upsetting upstarts. "We were all just kids – none of us knew we were going to be famous." Yeah, yeah, Terry, save it.

Today, O'Neill is a short, sweet, twinkly-eyed man who still can't believe his luck, talks merrily about the past, and says there's no-one interesting left to photograph. I beg to differ. But I did enjoy visiting him in his tiny basement studio in Mayfair, filled with boxes, files, drawers and cigarette smoke. I inhaled it along with his stories, pretending I was right back there with him.

Grumpy old man

I've never been a particular fan of Terence Conran. His well-fed, cigar-smoking (five a day, apparently), bon viveur persona – not to mention his ubiquity – hasn't ever sat too comfortably with me.

But I might have to revise my opinion. Meeting him a few days ago at a dinner for his 80th birthday, I got a fascinating glimpse into his personal world, and a new-found appreciation for what he's done for British lifestyle.

He set up a furniture, ceramics and textile workshop in the East End of London in the late 40s, and worked on the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951. But his first big public venture was The Soup Kitchen in 1953, a little restaurant just off The Strand. Inspired by trips to France, he served unimaginably exotic wares to a British public still on rations: espresso, French bread and cheese, and soup. Served in mugs! Inside were cane chairs and a quarry-tiled floor.

Conran founded Habitat in 1964 and revolutionised our homes. It sold colourful, exotic furniture and homewares – duvets, woks and Japanese paper lanterns – to that hip young generation, a world away from their parents' heavy, pre-war furniture hand-me-downs. The rest – design shops, divorces, a restaurant empire and designer offspring – is history.

At dinner, he was surrounded by women who had clearly been extremely beautiful in the 60s and still had that decade's tousled, blonde hair and smoky eyes; and dapper, old-school gents, in whom you could still detect a touch of the East End barrow boy.

I sat next to one, Roger Mavity, chief executive of Conran's holding company – unconventional, twinkly-eyed and with a cracking humour. He refused to take the quiz that had been laid on for us seriously, unlike the rest of the room – "It's a bit of a conversation killer, isn't it?" – and regaled me with stories. I was utterly charmed.

Conran, like many of his generation, hates waste of any kind. He works hard, is famously tight-fisted, and loathes mobile phones and bullshitters (notably Tony Blair and George Bush). In a speech at the end of the night, he might have said a few humble thank yous and raised his glass. Instead, he lambasted the Government, said that now he was 80 he better work harder as there was no time to waste, and made a slightly off-colour joke about cutting staff numbers, before someone relieved him of the microphone. And I admired him all the more for it.

"Mummy, they're going in again!"

This is Simon Murie. He's standing on a grassy hummock on the shore of Buttermere in the Lake District, doing I forget what with a banana. A joke involving cold water and male shrinkage? Demonstrating front crawl with soft fruit?

He was one of two guides leading a swimming and camping trip we went on last weekend. Our other guide was Olly (below, in blue), who has been a beach lifeguard in Cornwall, a surf bum everywhere from Bali to Costa Rica, and is now a PE teacher in Cumbria.

The weather was shocking, but the scenery heartstopping.

Murie used to be a mining engineer, but decided nine years ago to turn his hobby – open water swimming – into a job. The result is Swimtrek, a company that runs outdoor swimming trips all over the world, from Turkey to Mexico (I went with them to Greece last year – weirdly warmer than northern England – and never laughed so much).

While the rest of us squeezed into our wetsuits and shrieked as we entered the 12 degree water, Murie stripped down to his shorts as if it were the Mediterranean in August. It's really not: at 12 degrees, the cold hits your face between your eyes, your lips turn numb and your hands, by the time you climb out, are incapable of movement until you've grafted them to a mug of tea.

Australian by birth, Murie has swum Hellespont in Turkey, the Channel, the River Volta in Ghana and the Gibraltar Straits. He goes on half a dozen Swimtrek trips a year, and spends the rest of his time scouting for new locations. He swam alongside me twice, shouting encouragement and giving me technique tips.

But what I admired most about him is his modesty. When introducing himself, he didn't tell us it was his company. He got up before breakfast to manufacture sandwiches with excellent humour. And he cracked jokes all weekend.

On our final swim – the length of Lake Buttermere (above) – a small girl shouted: "Look Mummy, they're going in again!" Yes, I couldn't believe we were either. But I'm still glowing.

Brief Encounters: parallel parking

I've been spreading a little kindness around the world lately, for a feature: showering colleagues with compliments, helping lost tourists and chatting to neighbours like I was born to it. Random acts like this, not surprisingly, strengthen our connections with people and make us happier.

More interesting is news that happiness is contagious. Research from the US suggests three degrees of separation of positivity: our good mood affects not just us, but our friends, their friends and even their friends.

I was reminded of this a few days ago. I was trying to parallel park in front of a cafe filled with onlookers, and after ten minutes of getting no closer to the kerb gave up in a huff, leaving the car a foot from the pavement.

A man leapt up. "You're not gonna leave it like that are you, love?" he said. I nodded. "Give me the keys." As I handed them over (while simultaneously undoing decades of feminist progress) it occurred to me he might just drive off, but of course he didn't. It was a random act of kindness that forced me to trust him, and made me smile for the next two hours. I wonder if my own meagre acts, in a causal, butterfly-flapping-its-wings way, somehow prompted it. I like to think they did.