LIKE DEEPING NOVEL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 78, 12 January 1928, Page 7

LIKE DEEPING NOVEL.

WAITER'S SON A MAYOR. RISING YOUNG LAWYER. LONDON, Nov. 7. Robert is head waiter in the chief hotel of the country town of Guildford. After November. 9 Robert will take on a. new dignity. He will not only continue to be a head waiter, but he will be the father of the Mayor of the town in which he does his waiting. Thus has "Sorrell and Son"—the famous novel by Mr Warwick Deeping —corao to life, with the modification that "Sorrell," in this instance, is a waiter instead of an hotel porter, and the son is a solicitor instead of a surgeon'. Guildford is the place where this is •tappening. Mr William Radclilic Philpot, a rising young lawyer, partner in a firm with a practice in London as well as Surrey, has been, nominated by his colleagues on the town council as the Mayor of Guildford for the coming year. He will be elected on November 9 without opposition. His father, Mr Robert Philpot, is head! waiter at the Lion Hotel, at the bottom of Guildford's hump-backed high street, and has been there in that position for forty-nine years. It is difficult to say at the moment whether the head waiter father is iprouder of his son's success of the solicitor son of the father's splendid record and reputation as the best waiter in the southern shires. Hundreds and thousands of motorists who drive aolng the Portsmouth Road know Robert Philpot, with his fine presence and urbanity of manner. He is a head waiter out of another age, when "carriage folk" were the patrons of the coffee-room and coaches pulled into the yard of the Lion instead of sports cars with tHroiaty exhausts.

"I am" geeting near to my half-cen-tury as a head waiter," said. Robert—he is always Robert to his favourite customers—to a newspaper representative, "and I am still as hale and hearty as ever. The changes I have seen have been great, but the new times are just as interesting to me as the old. The world passes before you as - a head waiter. You see all sides of people, and you learn to judge them by their manners. I find now that the men, as a rule, have better manners than the women."