Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson
tom hodgkinson
At a recent Oldie lunch, I sat opposite Rodney Bewes, the great actor of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Now in his eighties, Rodney explained to me that the treatment he was receiving for a cancerous illness meant that he could not eat solid food.
‘I haven’t had a meal for six months,’ he said cheerfully, while pouring himself a large glass of red wine. ‘It’s great. Nothing to interrupt the drinking.’
I know exactly how he feels. Eating is a bit of a bore. When my evening meal arrives, I always feel a faint tinge of disappointment, because it means that the glorious pre-dinner phase, where you drink on an empty stomach and all the stresses of the day disappear, is about to end. The fact is, and it feels like heresy to say it, I am not hugely interested in food. I am far more interested in the people I am with, and the booze I am drinking.
At the Oldie lunch, the food was fine, but I cannot remember it. It was not the main attraction. It was the same at a Private Eye lunch I went to a few years ago in the upstairs room at the Coach and Horses in Soho. The food was basic and unmemorable – I think it was a piece of salmon with some boiled potatoes – but that was not the point. The thrill was being in a room with the wits of the day: Lynn Barber, Ian Hislop, Richard Ingrams, Francis Wheen.
But it seems I am very much alone in hating food. In fact, one of the very striking things about returning to the city after twelve years as Country Mouse is the absurd new obsession with food. On television, every other show is food-based. The London Evening Standard has an award to celebrate the kitchen antics of earnest, bearded men in aprons.
It’s all so deadly dull. In our minds, we have become little Giles Corens and are expected to coo over slow-braised duck
raised on organic sultanas, and even attempt our own review on Tripadvisor. ‘My companion’s tarte tatin was a little on the sweet side’ and all that guff. Reading over pretentious menus brings out my inner cab driver. Squid ink pappardelle and cucumber caviar – you what, mate?
When I am having lunch or dinner, I don’t want to waste my time talking about the food. I want to talk about ideas, books, or even Brexit.
Food has become a religion. But it’s not. It’s just grub.
In fact, I don’t even particularly like posh restaurants. I am just as happy in Pizza Express as The Ivy. Grand restaurants are always just slightly disappointing. You are spending a lot of money and therefore your standards get ridiculously high. There is all that palaver of ordering which is tedious. Then everyone has to try each other’s slowcooked pork belly or whatever. The bill comes and it is without fail bigger than the most pessimistic estimate you could come up with in your mind.
There is also something deeply irritating about the self-consciousness that has developed around food in this country. We are simply making far too much effort. It is still striking that steak and frites with a bottle of red in a French roadside pension or pasta in an obscure Italian village tastes a thousand times better than lunch at the Groucho Club and comes at a fraction of the price. Somehow, the French and Italians have just got it when it comes to food. They don’t have to try hard. It’s in the blood. There is none of the embarrassing overwork and prissiness of the Brits in the kitchen.
This is not to say that I am completely uninterested in food. One of the joys of living in the city is the enormous range of takeaways on offer. A favourite of ours in Shepherd’s Bush is the Eritrean. You get a load of spicy dishes which you spread out on a vast pancake called injera. And then, instead of eating with cutlery, you tear a bit of the injera off and gather a few morsels. It is delicious and enormous fun. But, crucially, it’s also cheap and unpretentious.
Neither am I against an element of theatricality and performance with food – on high days and holidays. The medievals used to roast a peacock, refeather it, paint its beak and feet gold, and bring it to the table. Dainty dishes with real blackbirds in them really were set before kings, and the grand households had their own teams of Heston Blumenthals in the kitchen, concocting ever more fanciful dishes. Feasting with a large gang of people is pure joy: Asterix books always closed with an outdoor, wild-boar binge. Sharing food out and making it for other people is a pleasure.
But part of me yearns for the Sixties attitude to food, memorably described by punk poet John Cooper Clarke when I interviewed him a few years back. ‘When I was a mod,’ he told me, ‘food was not a big deal.’ Music, clothes, drugs and dancing were the important things. Eating was something you did in a greasy spoon before the night out began. My favourite pub in London is probably the least foodie: it’s the Three Kings in Clerkenwell and it has a brilliantly simple and reasonably priced menu of sausage sandwich, chilli or meatballs. No poncing about.
‘Squid ink pappardelle and cucumber caviar – you what, mate?’