Tip tip hooray

Apparently, the story goes like this: after lunch with friends at The Ivy, the late, great Peter Cook asked for the bill.  He signed the credit card slip and handed it back to the maître d’.  Upon checking the total sum, the old boy leaned forward and whispered in Peter Cook’s ear, “I think you’ll [...]

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An awkward customer

For a good while now I’ve been meaning to write a piece about my ineptitude with chopsticks.  It’s a cause of considerable social embarrassment for me and try as I might I’ve never mastered the manipulation of the two bits of wood.  Before I learned to drive I would look at people capable of manoeuvring [...]

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The Prince Of Denman Street

Sorely tempted as I was by the Melinda Messenger Family Cookbook available in one store and merely sore just looking at the Tiger Woods sex doll in the window of the shop next door, what I really hankered for last Thursday in Soho was bacon, egg and chips and a small frothy coffee. Up until [...]

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As cheap as chips?

Inflation is a problem.  Everyone says so.  But I must admit not to have particularly noticed.  With the exception of petrol and gas and electricity where the price increases always feel like the result of being scammed at best and more usually robbed rather than the result of complex economic factors; and public transport, the [...]

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A happy meal

In case I gave too negative a description of my faux-sunburn condition earlier, I want to correct the record.  Admittedly, in the surgery it did take me some attempts to convince my doctor that I hadn’t forgotten to mention that I’d been roasting myself on a beach in the Caribbean for a week, but once [...]

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Inscrutable #2

From time to time, making a little extra effort is worth it. Taking the trip to the Four Seasons restaurant in Gerrard Street is a pleasure, but an easy one  It’s near Soho, it’s in China Town and there are well-served tube stations a mere chopstick-fling away.  Everyone with any sense lives in London and [...]

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Inscrutable

What it is one does on Twitter to generate thousands of followers I don’t know. Obviously being famous helps but there are plenty of cases of mere civilians like me who count their disciples in the tens of thousands.  Obviously I pretend I don’t really care but I really really really do.  I’m not even [...]

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113 Charing Cross Road

Over a quarter of a century ago when I first crossed the threshold of Foyles, the venerable book seller on London’s Charing Cross Road, the shop still operated a policy of customer service which would have warmed the heart of the most severe of 1970′s Soviet department stores. I remember not much in the way [...]

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Taking the Underground

I’ve written before about the relationship that exists between my stomach and doing stand-up but tonight that slightly uneasy coupling takes a new turn. Josie Long has kindly asked me to join her and some others performing at Ms Marmite Lover’s Underground Restaurant in north London. Comedy in any room other than a drab, badly [...]

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If it’s August it must be deep-fried

If I say so myself I cooked a really rather good lunch which we ate in the garden the other day.  Two of the dishes were from Simon Hopkinson’s newish book The Vegetarian Option   and utilised a couple of ingredients both delicious and in season, tomatoes and runner beans.  As much as I was chuffed [...]

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