The “gossip columnist” referred to must have been Shinan Govani, who writes of his experience of the event for Canada’s National Post:

I had my own mystifying experience during dinner when, only after spending an inordinate time talking to a man whose name I didn’t catch, did I realize that my table-mate was Whit Stillman, one my all-time favourite directors! (He’s the man behind those incredibly chatty, urbane films Metropolitan, Barcelona and Last Days of Disco — and on this night, when he’d discovered I was Canadian, all he wanted to talk about was Conrad Black!)