I n 2012 I was living in Sydney, halfway through the shelf life of our annual theatric political satire The Wharf Revue , although I didn’t know that at the time. I was also doing some work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, hosting panel discussions and interviews, when a colleague asked if I would be interested in co-leading a guided tour to New York, focusing on art and theatre. Of course I said yes.

Handling the art side of things was my gallery colleague Brian Ladd and together we landed in a wintry Manhattan in January with about 25 guests largely, shall we say, a certain demographic who were keen to sample the cultural delights of the great metropolis.

And let’s face it, there’s no shortage of them. We took in the Metropolitan Museum and the Cloisters, MoMA, the Frick, the Whitney, Radio City, the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, the High Line, half a dozen shows and several exhaustive bus tours from one end of the island to the other with our indefatigable local guide Frederique.…