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So I said to Claire Price, as I shimmied through the throng, I especially enjoyed the last half hour of David Hare’s The Power of Yes at the National.That’s good, she replied, because that’s the part of the play I’m in.Phew, I’d said something right for a change. I’d had a bit of a rough ride up to that point at the star-crazed galaxy we call the Whatsonstage Awards party in the twinkling, pounding lights-and-music cockpit of the Cafe de Paris.Steven Berkoff made it quite clear that he was disappointed I hadn’t liked On the Waterfront more. And Richard Bean veered away from my cheery greeting with the look on his face of someone who’s just trodden in something nasty on the pavement.This was a shame as I think I’d quite liked his England People Very Nice, also at the National, but you never know with playwrights. They’ve had years of practice at taking offence where none was intended, not to mention where it was.But old has-Bean and I may have history, though I can’t for the life of me think when, where or why.Anyway, moving right along, or in this case right next to runner Bean, Lindsay Posner told me he’s about to direct Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance at the Haymarket, which is very Haymarket of him, though I wish they’d get Philip Prowse back to do his version.Glorious Hannah Waddingham hugged me to her splendid bosom and confided how disappointed she and Trevor Nunn were that she wasn’t going with A Little Night Music to Broadway.She’s so discreetly sweet she even said she thought Catherine Zeta-Jones would be good in her role. She’s obviously forgiven (if not forgotten) me for loathing Lautrec and Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens.Hannah was in serious pow wow with Caroline Sheen, talented cousin of Michael, who’s about to go to America on tour in Mary Poppins. Oh, great, what are you doing in it? I asked. Mary Poppins, she replied, slightly crestfallen.Caroline’s partner, the slightly slimmed down Michael Jibson, was singing the praises of director Jonathan Mumby, who seems a very nice and mumsy Mumby; tall and lean, Mumby has the stamp of success about him after a really fine Dream in the park last year (Jibson was a stand-out Puck) and his excellent revival of Life is a Dream at the Donmar. When will the boy wake up, I wonder?Designer William Dudley gave me a few stern public speaking notes (after I’d done my announcing stint alongside editor Terri Paddock and deputy Theo Bosanquet); but we’d all heard James Earl Jones growling magnificently to share the stellar announcing duties with Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan, so we knew what we had to do, even if we couldn’t.Alison Steadman looked charming, so did Sinead Cusack who was keeping a low profile as hubby Jeremy Irons in his motorbike leathers (as usual) gave an impassioned and witty speech about the virtues of Masterclass, the Whatsonstage charity this year.I also enjoyed long-time-no-see mini catch-ups with Vivien Goodwin from Samuel French, Bulgarian beauty Dolya Gavanski, producers Karl Sydow, Richard Jordan, Stephen Waley-Cohen and Russell Labey, Jermyn Street manager Penny Horner, playwright Simon Stephens and a trio of great RSC alumni: Guy Henry, Roger Allam and Peter de Jersey, whose red socks I covet in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.After the brief encounters with Berkoff and Bean I avoided Alistair McGowan in case he’d read my review of his King’s Head nominated comedy, and I wanted to tell Samantha Spiro how brilliant she’d been as both Beatrice and Dolly Levi in Regent’s Park but she was surrounded by a crowd of attentive young men lapping up her every highly animated word.Some people I wanted to see but missed — Madeleine Lloyd Webber, especially, and David Babani and Tom Siracusa from the Menier.Then suddenly I saw Nicholas de Jongh marching about with a scowl on his face and after Bean and Berkoff there was only one person that scowl was going to break over (I’d quite liked Nick’s Plague Over England, but not as much as he thought I should).Anyway, Simon Dutton tells me that Nick wants Bill Kenwright to cast Daniel Craig as John Gielgud in the film of the play. Does that mean we’ll get Catherine Zeta-Jones as Sybil Thorndike, I wonder?I heard about the pleasures of alcohol abstinence from musical director Gareth Valentine and actor Roger Lloyd Pack. Gareth said he just can’t do those long late nights any more while Roger, three weeks on the wagon, is enjoying his dreams at night.It was time to go home, but not before congratulating the Tricyle Theatre company on their Not Black and White Season.Karl Collins, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Abhin Galeya and Jimmy Akingbola were setting a high cool high five standard, while newcomer Rebecca Scroggs, fresh from RADA and notably delightful in Bola Agbaje’s Detaining Justice, was the very latest in a long line of talent stretching round the Cafe de Paris and into the darkening December afternoon outside.