THE Central Committee of the ruling Progressive Labour Party laid on an absolutely "Bermuda-ful" reception on Monday night for a delegation of United Kingdom Parliamentarians on a week-long visit to the island.

The visitors, accompanied by their wives, were given the warmest welcome to the party's Alaska Hall headquarters in Court Street, and feted with all the cassava pie and local sea food, along with other delicacies and good wine that they could consume.

In turn the visitors rewarded their hosts with some friendly political banter laced with good old British diplomatic wit and humour about the physical charms of Bermuda and her people.

Lord John Tomlinson, the veteran ruling party peer unabashedly shed his neutrality as delegation leader to recite the PLP's Motto: "PLP All the Way, and All the Way PLP."

Lord Tomlinson's Conservative counterpart Richard Page beat his breast and declared how marvellous it was to be in a place "where a Labour Government was doing a good job".

Labour MP David Crausby greeted his hosts as "brothers and sisters in Labour".

He recalled making a visit to an island in the Pacific that he thought was paradise. But being on his first trip to Bermuda he realised paradise had now been really found.

Lord Thorpe, the Liberal Democrat, was also complimentary about Bermuda, noting it seemed to have everything else except "a Liberal Party".

Frequent visitor to Bermuda, Labour MP Ian Davidson, having been introduced by PLP vice-chairman Roddy Burchall as "our very own M.P. at Westminster", responded by saying "comrades and friends".