Low life
Toadies
Jeffrey Bernard
The most noticeable disadvantage in not being the sort of journalist who can bask under an expense account is the one of not being able to eat freely and in style. I can hardly remember what a lobster looks like and yet there was a time, about ten years ago, when I could somehow find a good, reason to dtop into Wheelers in 01° Compton Street every, day. Now when I eat out, which is every day bar, Sunday, my eye, scans the right hand side of the menu alto comes to rest at around about the £1.50 mark. At that point you find nursery food, and although I'm fond of nursery food don't really want it every day. The appalling standards of London grub today have filtered right down to the workman's café. Years ago, there was a cafe in the King's Road called the Cosy Dining Rooms. They actually served bubble and squeak with the eggs and bacon among other things, and everyone could afford it even those of us on the bum. But the trouble is that people now will swallow both literally and metaphorically anything. The other morning, feeling far too rough to be able to cook my own breakfast without heaving, I went into a café in Camden Town. Several cockroaches had got there before me alongside three Greeks sharing one copy of the Sun. I had one fried.egg with one rasher of bacon, one piece of toasted Sliced bread which was like warm rubber and a cup of tea. The plate was cold and swimming in fat and the bill was £1.35. I reckon the proprietor's outlay for that lot to have been fractionally less than the 35p. Now I happen to believe in complaining, but that can be tricky when the man behind the jump looks like a gorilla. Anyway, in an attempt to eradicate the memory, I took myself to Fortnums for breakfast the following day. What an extraordinary place it Still is. Although it appears that you have to be over seventy to get a job there as a waitress, the tea is excellent and there's the added bonus of watching the remarkable Clientele. A man behind me who'd gone off the idea of his bacon was carefully putting it In an ash tray, and next to him Terry Stamp looked to be working on a script. Sadly, I discovered that their ice cream is made by Lyons.
I'll tell you what I do think is helping to ruin food in London and that's the food and wine writer. I now try to make it a rule never to eat in a restaurant which boasts a write up from the likes of Fay Maschler or Michael Parkinson. There's nothing like a plug to make a restaurant complacent. In no time at all well for just as long as it takes an ad agency to ruin the place by packing it with expense lunches they'll serve up anything With little care. The Gay Hussar, I must say, IS just about the only place that keeps up the standards and I'm not saying that because I owe Victor Sasse ten bob from 1952.
Luckily, I can recommend places because no one will take the slightest notice of anything I say, and thank God for it. Take my regular lunch place and watering hole. It not only provides the best value nursery lunch I know, it provides a spectacular cabaret free of charge.One of the things that first attracted me to it was the way they stack other people's dirty plates on your table while awaiting the dumb waiter. There is a waiter part time, the guvnor in fact who isn't dumb. When I first asked him to remove the offending plates he said, If you don't like it you can f— eat somewhere else.' It reminded me of the Prince of Wales's motto. But the best act I've seen, unfortunately performed only too rarely, was when his mother, a dear friend, Put the dirty plates into the lift before ascertaining that the lift was in fact upstairs. God alone knows what can be at the bottom of that tiny lift shaft. Perhaps it's where old boozers go when the Barman in the Sky calls last orders. I said to the guvnor quite recently 'Norman,' I said, 'I must give you a write up one of these days.' I don't care What you write,' he said, 'It won't do me any f-good or harm.' Yes, the badinage, the Wit that flows over the toad in the hole, the crapaud dans le trou if you like, positively scintillates. As dear old Norm said to me last night as he threw me out, 'Spoof is not a game of skill eligible to be played in pubs and if you don't like it, you can piss off: How very true.
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