Another
year and yet another disappointment. For the last few months I have lain in
bed each morning tumescent with anticipation. I have snatched the morning post
from my butler’s palsied hands and scanned the envelopes for ‘the
one’. Now, as January begins I must face the sad fact: I have not received
an honour from Her Majesty.
It is of course easy to become bitter about such things, especially when one sees the class of people receiving honours nowadays. Lord Coe, who should have been hung for his involvement in blighting this country with the 2012 Olympics, has received a KBE. This despite the recent news that the award of the Olympics was somewhat suspect with crucial votes being lost in the post, or some such. Of course one does not wish to suggest that Lord Sir Coe was in any way involved in cheating, but the suspicion taints all around and Her Majesty may have been ill advised to give him another honour. There is something disreputable about people who run, take Lord Archer for example, who was shown to be something of a bad egg some years ago.
I have served this country for years. During the war I cooked under fire for many a brave sailor and took in good part their jocular assertions that I was being paid by Hitler to poison them. Quite frankly there is little one can do to make Bully Beef palatable although God knows I tried. You have to remember that garlic was unheard of at this time and olive oil was sold in chemists as a skin treatment. I, of course, having spent many happy months at my grandfather’s summer palazzo in Umbria was no stranger to good food. But when the Italians refused to intern me at the outbreak of hostilities I had to return to grey old England where the colour of the sky matched the colour of the soup. My call up papers arrived all too soon, despite my mother writing me an eloquent sick note to show Churchill. The old brute just tossed it in the bin and had me frog marched to Chatham docks the very same day. He drank, you know.
My role as a gourmet alone should earn me an honour. The swill I have sometimes been forced to eat in order to review a restaurant would probably have killed a lesser man. I have taken bullets, metaphorically speaking, for the great British public. Thanks to me they have avoided unpleasant nights out and, despite death threats from some volatile restaurateurs, I have never slackened in my duties. Sometimes I have had to literally poke the foie gras down my throat with my finger, so overstuffed have I been and what thanks have I received? None.
Even some Welsh castrato has received a Knighthood! The mind boggles that a man who at an advanced age can sing ‘I’m your sex bomb, sex bomb,’ despite being little more than a wizened shell of a human, ugly even by Welsh standards, and not turn pink with embarrassment is incredible. That The Queen should choose to confer a knighthood on him is simply bizarre. They say her son talks to plants and George V was not all there either.
Time is running out for me, as it is for Bruce Forsyth another paragon of Britishness cruelly passed over for serious honour. He at least can dance his blues away. For me there is nothing but the promise of a good meal and bottle of Pomeroy from the vast cellars that wind underneath my mansion. I think I will kill the Koala we had been fattening to celebrate the end of Lent. With enough roast potatoes it may yet be of sufficient size to feed a small gathering of friends this weekend. It’s a somewhat fatty meat and always tastes rather oddly of cold remedy, but it is rare treat all the same.
I hope you have a happier new year than I, but I shall mask my disappointment and soldier on. There are still some restaurants in which I haven’t yet eaten in and wines yet to reach maturity. The work continues.
