My co-director and I used to take the young staff of the Adam Smith Institute out to an annual dinner, usually a posh one in black tie. One year we opted for a restaurant called the Hispaniola, set aboard a boat floating on the Thames off Victoria Embankment near Westminster Pier. It was, and still is, a reasonably upmarket Spanish restaurant, but its main appeal was the novelty of eating on a boat.
We enjoyed a good meal with adequate quantities of wine. A pianist entertained with a selection of light music melodies, nothing too strident. I thought it would be nice to request a song, and asked the waiter to bring me an empty brandy glass. As we'd all recently watched Casablanca yet again, I wrote "As Time Goes By" on a slip of paper and dropped it into the glass., Crucially I put a £10 note beside it in the glass and asked the waiter to hand it to the pianist.
We watched it being delivered to the far end of the room, and saw the pianist read the note. Immediately he struck up the melody sung in the movie by Sam in Rick's Bar. The words came into my mind, "You must remember this…"
Yes, I do remember it, as did our young staff who thought the episode very stylishly done.