If this happens here, the café will be taken over

The local staffer of a Colombo based diplomatic mission and a deputy minister met for their periodic beer session recenlty at a Colombo pub.

When the first mug was over, they waited for the waiter to get their second. There was a delay and that prompted the politician to say, "Let's have some patience. Do you know even British Prime Minister David Cameron was refused service when he jumped a queue at a coffee bar?" The staffer replied "yes, yes. If that happened in Sri Lanka, they would have acquired the hotel and sacked all the staff."

The story they were talking about was reported in the Daily Mail newspaper in London. This is what it said: "A waitress at a cof- fee shop failed to recognise Prime Minister David Cameron and told him she was busy serving other customers, and asked him to stand in a queue for 10 minutes. Cameron was on his way to the Armed Forces Day celebrations in Plymouth when he decided to stop for coffee. He went into the Sandwich Box Plus cafe, but waitress Sheila Thomas failed to recognise him and told him to wait. "Cameron's aides went inside another bakery next door, and picked up for Cameron a jam doughnut and a cup of tea. When the prime minister began to enjoy his treat outside the shop, passersby recognised him and he again went inside the first cafe. However, Thomas was upset to see Cameron had picked up his food elsewhere and gave him another scolding.

"I didn't realise it was him (Cameron) at first. I was in the middle of serving a customer, so I was running around trying to do something and didn't take too much notice, to be honest," Thomas said.

"He asked if we served takeaway coffee and I said, 'Yes but I'm in the middle of serving somebody', and she said, 'I'm so sorry'. It was only afterwards somebody told me it was the prime minister. "He came back in afterwards and I told him off for not getting a coffee here. He shook hands and was very pleasant," Thomas said. This was not the first time the prime minister has been made to wait for a drink by a busy waitress, the daily said.