I Swear!

(Jury Service - The Trial - Days 4 & 5  - a Crown Court in London)

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

If you were thinking that the trial itself (or the blog version of it) might be juicy and full of sex, murder and intrigue, dream on. Not only wasn't it, but I am bound by some sort of law never to divulge the content of the trial upon pain of death (or worse).

I can't even tell you the name of the Defendant - although we could, I suppose, play a game of legal hangman, where you try to guess it, one letter at a time, until either you are correct or I get hanged.

So in place of all the juicy (or non-juicy) details of the trial, you will have to be content with another blog about the process of the trial, its (anonymous) participants and its (unspecified) outcome.

Firstly, we are now all locked in a jury deliberation room. And I do mean LOCKED. No escape, except in the case of a fire. There's a loo in our suite and a bell to summon the jury bailiff but not much else. We have had our phones and all other electronic devices taken away from us. We are totally cut off from the world - destined to spend as long as takes in here to reach a verdict. All we have is paper, pens, the exhibits and 12 good men (or women) - and some of them are very vocal - whereas some of them say practically nothing.

There are 2 lawyers on the jury - including me. Neither of us practise criminal law. And exactly as predicted by everyone I know, and despite me trying to look as unhelpful as possible, I have just been elected Jury Foreman. Oh, bliss.

We take a quick initial vote. We are not unanimous. I can't tell you the actual vote but let's just say that we are going to be here a while.

During the course of the deliberation, some of the jurors begin to look like they would happily murder some of the other jurors, which might be why they don't let you bring any sharp objects into court. A bunch of us contemplate committing murder with a plastic yoghurt spoon but it wouldn't be pretty or quick. The window only opens about 3cm so the "throwing the non-cooperative juror(s) out of the window" idea has gone out of the window - just.

It's hotter and sweatier in here than the defendant's collar.

The judge is obviously bored and far from pleased that things are taking this long.

It's an open and shut case, he says, looking over the top of his glasses, but he's not making eye contact with any of us so might be talking about his lunchbox, for all anyone listens.

Counsel for the Defence is tapping his/her fingers on a big black book which looks like the Hogwarts book of legal spells, as if trying to bewitch us into a not-guilty verdict.

Counsel for the Prosecution is gazing at his/her Macbook Pro (probably ordering tonight's dinner, downloading porn, or watching The Voice on catch-up, for all we know).

One lady juror is getting particularly agitated on account of the lack of smoking facilities in the deliberation room. She protests that it is her legal and constitutional right to smoke and that she should be let out for that purpose. The judge is not convinced. He says the jury has to remain together during their entire period of deliberation and that she can only be allowed outside to smoke if everyone goes outside! And so it came to pass that all 12 of us had to be herded like sheep and escorted from the building by a burly jury bailiff who watched over us like a hawk as the aforementioned nicotine addict got her fix (twice) in the space of about 3 minutes.

Then, later, much, much later, one of the other women began to fret that she would not be home in time to collect her children from school. The jury bailiff was summoned again and asked if she could phone a friend. The answer was no. She was ordered to write her message on a piece of paper for it to be handed to the judge for his permission for someone in the court office to call her children's school.

I began to visualise us all being locked in the Tower that evening or at least the Tower Hotel, if we weren't done.

But in the end, we did our duty and the Judge briefly looked up to bid us a fond farewell and thank us for our time and attention in a speech which he must have given thousands of times, and he sounded thoroughly fed up and insincere when he made it, reading from a card, like Ant and Dec reading from an autocue machine.

The "release" from jury service was a bit of an anti-climax compared to the initiation.

The ritual handing back of the iPhones, Blackberries and other confiscated electronic devices.

A final warning about not spilling the beans regarding any facts of the case, its verdict, the deliberation or any other matter of which we had knowledge as jurors - so presumably that included not spilling the beans about the beans in the canteen, too.

I wish I could say that the entire jury service experience had been spiritually rewarding or satisfying in terms of social responsibility but, in reality, most jurors would rather have just been at work or going about their normal business than being herded like cattle and treated like the criminals whose cases we were being asked to try.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I Swear!

(Jury Service - Day 3  - A Crown Court in London)

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

I've been noticing a lot of numbers since I've been here. It's like someone had a number fetish when they designed this building.

Everything has a number; light switches, taps, toilets, plugs, doors and staircases, you name (or number) it.

The only things that don't have a number are - wait for it - the Courts!

Yes, believe it or not, the numbers of the Courts are printed on white A4 copier paper in Arial 100pt and stuck on each of the doors with Sellotape. Strange.

Being a potential juror involves a lot of waiting around.

Some enterprising jurors have started their own poker tournament.

They have plenty of time to build a roulette table, actually, if they like, but they will have to do it without screwdrivers or tools, which might present a challenge.

The clerk has just done another roll call. I am sure she has OCD and has to keep counting and numbering people (and doors).

There is a lady next to me who has interesting eyes. I say "interesting" in that they can look both ways ... at the same time.

I think they are called "home and away" eyes (because they can see both ends of a football pitch simultaneously).

She could be uniquely qualified for jury service as she will be able to see both the Judge and the Defendant at the same time, if we ever get anywhere near a trial, that is.

Speaking of which, we have had a slight technical hitch today. The public sector unions chose today to strike and have formed a neat picket line outside Court. I took no notice of it as I breezed through but I did notice that several other people stopped or refused to cross the line.

Now, we've just been told that some of those who refused to cross the line were jurors so the Judge has had to dust off his law books to see if there is a precedent for ordering them to attend and cross the line - or even if he can clap them in irons and lock them up for contempt. How exciting. We might get to try the other jurors.

I Swear!

(Jury Service - Day 2  - A Crown Court in London)

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

Today started better than yesterday - with a morning off. I'm getting to know what it feels like to be a Judge.

Start work at 2pm, a couple of hours wearing a wig and dispensing justice and then off for a round of golf at 4pm, before cocktails at the club.

If only I had not had to do a day's actual real work before coming to Court.

At least I got through the scanner without having anything confiscated today - although my belt did have to come off (not because of diet failure, oh ye of little faith - but because the scanner is so sensitive that even a gold tooth might set it off).

There seem to be a few more people here today than yesterday. Maybe they've heard about the excellent local cuisine and generous expense allowance (of £5.71 per day), not to mention the view of the river, which has to be one of the best in London - as long as there are no bars on your window, blocking the view.

It's interesting to see how the room seems to have naturally polarised into different social and sexually oriented classes. Lesbians, ladies with leggings, people with leather jackets, lesbians with leggings and leather jackets etc.

I am in a category which I would classify as "tie owners/potential jury foremen".

I've just been asked to hand in my travel expenses reclaim form. It's day 2 and I have no idea how many days I will be here, so you might wonder how I can complete a travel reclaim form. So did I. But that logic was totally wasted on the clerk who insisted on having my form fully completed, TODAY.

They've just done another roll call. A man has been sent to the toilet to check for anyone hiding in there.

It's worse than school. I am already looking forward to playtime (but not cross-country - as I never did see the point of running through a stream when there was a perfectly good bridge over it).

It's 2.30pm now and it's all gone quiet. There are a handful of us left in the room but nobody knows what's next.

There are flat screen TVs on the wall but we are not allowed to watch normal TV - only the video about how to be a good juror, which was less than thrilling the first time around and is not likely to be repeated on Dave or nominated for a BAFTA, any time soon, as it features what looks like a genuine Court clerk trying to act and seems to have been filmed mainly on location using an iPhone.

I've tried a few seats in an effort to get comfortable. I feel like Goldilocks, but without the porridge or bears. Some of the seats are really hard. Others are too soft. A man next to me is horizontal and snoring like Billy-O (< I had to Google how to spell that - I couldn't believe it wasn't spelled "bilio" or "billio" but apparently it's named after a man called Billy - so there you are - this blog can now claim to be educational) - so he must have hit the jackpot in the seating department.

At least I didn't have to sample the delights of the microwave in the canteen today, as I took the opportunity to eat before arrival - a bit like flying with Virgin, when you just know that what you are about to receive will be truly awful. (That's just reminded me of grace before meals at our school - we used to say "for what we are about to receive, may the pigs be truly thankful".)

-- 15 minute interval (radio silence) --

So I've just been up to Court 10 and am now officially sworn in as a juror. I can't tell you what the case is about or I will have to kill you (and then I'll be the one on trial!).

Another short day as the judge has to finish off another trial, apparently.

It just shows that the Judge was properly brought up having been taught that it's rude to start another trial before finishing the one you started, like mouthfuls of food - and I am pretty sure he doesn't wear leggings, either.

Judge Judy demonstrates how to put on leggings with one hand!

To be continued...

I Swear!

(Jury Service - Day 1 - A Crown Court in London)

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

Nobody tells you that you are going to be searched when you turn up for jury service.

So, there I was with my multi-tool dangling from my keyring - containing a screwdriver, knife and various other jail-escaping and judge-injuring implements - boldly walking through the scanner without a care in the world when every warning device known to man was triggered.

My prize possession was prized from my keyring and submitted into evidence as Exhibit A, complete with its own little plastic evidence bag. "You can have it back when you leave", said the guard with a been-there, seen-it-all sneer.

Remember your first day at school? Well, it's just like that, but with a few more criminals!

I was thrilled to learn that the Court had thoughtfully laid on special dining arrangements for us. Our own exclusive canteen, no less. We then learned that this was to protect us from coming into contact with the defendant, his lawyer or his family in the main canteen, which sounded slightly more ominous. Would ours have foie gras and fillet steak or just jacket spuds and baked beans? Our pre-charged dining card had been automatically credited with our daily allowance - of £5.71- so foie gras was looking unlikely.

There were magazines to keep us amused whilst waiting - but historic OK and Hello! magazines soon lose their appeal (no Court-related pun intended)!

Soon we would all be swearing (I had been practising during the journey to Court on the Jubilee Line when someone trod on my toe - and in the car, en route to the station, come to think of it).

I never knew that there were so many different oaths. Almighty God was still in with a chance but had rivals. Waheguru and The Gita seemed more popular but I had no idea who they were.

I am writing this blog on a Galaxy Tab which I fear is about to be confiscated. We've just been warned about not taking devices into Court which can communicate with the internet - but I should be fine as my Tab is on Vodafone which means it rarely connects to the Internet except in the Vodafone store where you first see it demonstrated (before you buy it)!

It's like an airport waiting lounge - but with no flight information. To pass the time, I decide to put my coat in the secure rack provided. I insert a £1 coin, and thread the wire through the sleeve and lock it with the key. I then try to get it out again but the key won't fit the lock it just came out of. Despite strenuous efforts, it won't budge. If only I still had my keyring multitool, I'm sure I could fix it.

I find a lady with a badge. She looks helpful. She wasn't. "Well you've lost your coat then" she tells me, with her best customer service foot forward, accompanied by a large helping of sarcasm.

Now it's time to watch a DVD. Oh, good. What will it be, I wonder? American Pie? Harry Potter? No. It's a DVD all about juries. Here is a picture of a judge. Here is the defendant. It was like the ABC of being on a jury, for special needs pupils.

I've given up on the coat for now as they are starting to call our names. It's like Argos, but without the merchandise. We are all eager and innocent (until proven guilty).

They call the register. Some naughty jurors don't say Yes when called or fail to switch off their phones and are told off. I fear I will end up doing lines or detention if they catch me writing this blog. I am trying to pretend this is a Kindle book reader and not a Tab. I am ready to explain all the tapping on the screen as a nervous tick, if necessary. I don't fancy jail (unless the food is better). Now I wish I'd kept that Get Out of Jail Free card from the Monopoly set handy.

I've just been up to Court 9 with 29 other jurors. Yes, 29. I always thought there were 12 in a jury so I was wondering if there was some kind of super-jury for really complex trials when the judge brought us all down to earth with a bump. There are trials which last 3 days, he explained, and trials which last 3 months. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those.  He then went on to explain that jury service was like national service and how it was our legal and public duty to serve. I swear I heard Land of Hope and Glory playing gently in the background but I could have been imagining that.

A woman next to me gasped and muttered "Oh my God!" in a loud whisper like he had just passed the death sentence on her. Or maybe she was just practising her Oath?

Then we were all asked if that was OK. If not, we had 30 minutes to write a note to the judge, in our best handwriting, with our reasons to be excused. My "note" ran to 2 pages of A4.

To take my mind off the thought of 3 months of jury service, the judge has just sent us all for lunch. And I was right - jacket potato and baked beans were on the menu.

I also managed to locate the Court appointed locksmith during his lunch hour who released my coat from its period of detention, with time off for good behaviour.

Lunch was delicious - and thanks for asking. My potato was microwaved to perfection and the beans were so delicately plonked in the slit, that even Raymond Blanc would have approved.

Yay! I have just been released from that long trial so my letter worked. Could it have been the threat of litigation at the end or just a sympathy vote for a fellow lawyer from the Judge?

I am sure that after the Judge read my detailed and lengthy submission, I might even expect a call to the Bar (and I don't mean the King's Head)!

A nice Hungarian lady next to me also got off. Her scribbled note just read "Hungary" so she either has a foreign holiday booked, can't speak a word of English or just fancied another jacket potato.

Now we are back in the transit lounge like outcast refugees waiting to be selected for another trial. And this time, could I please have the 3 day trial which was advertised in the brochure?!

There are people asleep. People crunching loud snacks. People on the phone. People reading old magazines (there is even a sign apologising for the lack of choice of magazines. Apparently, the rest were damaged in a recent flood).

I'm very bored, now. Not even my own blog is amusing me.

But wait - I have just had more good news.

I have just been told to go home (it's 2.30pm) and come back tomorrow.

A half-day on my first day. Things are looking up

To be continued ...

Full English Breakfast - how sweet!

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

So there I was in sunny Pimlico the other day when I happened upon a small café offering "Tradisional Engish Breakfast".

I am pleased to report that I managed to resist the temptation because I am on a strict diet which excludes most of the stuff you might find in a "tradisional" English breakfast.

But then I read about a sweeter version, which grabbed my attention.

Could a Full English actually be a dessert?

Apparently, it can. Vicky McDonald, says she has spent weeks perfecting the dish to make sure it looked just like the real thing but tasted wonderfully sweet - and here it is:

Apparently, the bacon is really coloured brandy snap biscuits, the egg is a dollop of panna cotta topped with lemon curd and the sausages are caramelised peanut butter sponge cakes. The hash browns are brioche coated with panko breadcrumbs, the black pudding is chocolate biscuit cake and the beans are tiny biscuits coated in white chocolate and coated in a fruit coulis. So there you have it. Breakfast, but sweeter. All very "Heston" (think Meat Fruit) ... but without the (nitrogen) smoke and mirrors.

Of course, a Full English (savoury or sweet version) is notoriously bad for your health, as I am constantly being reminded as I am forcefully diverted to the healthy section of the menu to select from Carrot & Ginger Juice with Granola, or Pressed Apple Juice and Bran Flakes.

When I stay in a hotel, however, I feel it is my legal and patriotic duty to test ALL of the breakfast ingredients on offer, even if I don't actually normally eat them.

But we should all be aware of our waistlines and bottoms as I found out recently when I discovered that the lady who tests the beds for Premier Inn hotels has insured her bottom for £4m.

Natalie Thomas, who spends eight hours per day bouncing on beds (for work, not pleasure, apparently) says her rear is so sensitive that it helps her detecting lumps and inconsistencies as she leads a team to ensure the quality of the 46,000 Premier Inn beds.

The 39-year-old from Bedfordshire has the job title 'Director of Bed Bouncing' and apparently spends 20 minutes on each bed, although nobody is exactly sure what she does with the other 19 minutes after the initial bounce.

The article didn't say which company she is insured with nor whether she checked with a meerkat before "plumping" for that particular insurer, but you can bet your bottom dollar that claiming under her policy will be far from straightforward.

Apart from J-Lo and Beyonce, the bottom's pretty much fallen out of the bottom insurance market lately.

And I wonder what detailed medical examinations Natalie had to undergo before her policy went live - and whether non-payment of the premium would put her in arrears?

Too much nimble in your diet can lead to feelings of elevation!

OK, enough bottom jokes, now. But before I bottom out, I must just leave you with an unusual story about a bottom and an art gallery. No, I must.

A woman in the US has been charged with attacking a $30 million piece of artwork by punching, scratching and sliding her buttocks against it.

36-year-old Carmen Tisch is said to have "assaulted" the work "1957-J no.2", by abstract expressionist Clyfford Still whilst visiting a museum in Denver, Colorado, when she pulled down her trousers in front of the oil-on-canvas painting.

She then reportedly proceeded to rub up against the work with her buttocks before urinating on herself causing $10,000 worth of damage.

The $30m work of art which Carmen Tisch used asToilet Paper

Now, we all know that art appreciation is a subjective matter but surely she was taking (or, in this case, giving) the "P"?

There may, of course, be a perfectly rational explanation for her apparently scandalous behaviour, but it is hard to imagine one, except perhaps a lack of toilet paper at the Clyfford Still museum?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blogging isn't Writing, it's just Graffiti with Punctuation!

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

The comment which lends itself to the name of this article is attributed to one of the characters in the film "Contagion".

Whether that character was suffering from a contagious disease at the time he uttered it is not known, but it surely rings true with some of my critics who share that same opinion (thanks, Mum!).

There are others who go even further and say blogging is just verbal masturbation.

Speaking of which, which we mustn't, of course, I was fascinated to read a report about a 36 year old female Brazilian accountant who suffered from a chemical imbalance that triggers severe anxiety and hypersexuality, who won the legal right to masturbate at work ... up to 47 times per day. Apparently, her lawyers likened her condition to that of a handicapped person (well, she probably had RSI). And anyone who is thinking what I am now thinking about accountants, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself, for such generalisation.

Compared to Ana Catarian Bezerra, however, I am practically a Saint, although I do seem to have worn down the F key on my keyboard, recently, writing all those complaining letters.

Lately, I have noticed an alarming similarity between myself and Richard Wilson from One Foot in the Grave. Not that I have suddenly developed a Scottish accent but I have begun to complain more frequently. No; constantly.

Richard Wilson recently presented a Channel 4 TV documentary entitled "On Hold" where he attempted to use telephone car-parking payment systems, voice-controlled cinema booking systems and supermarket self-service tills, with pretty much the same disastrous results as the rest of the human race, except the man who invented them.

I tried to park my car in Golders Green last week. It was an urgent call of nature. I was driving past the bagel shop and was desperate for a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel. Fair enough? The parking system outside was pay by phone only. £1.20 for 30 minutes should do it, I thought. It took me about 20 minutes to work out how to do it and actually do it and then I had a telephone call from a nice Indian lady at Barclaycard who warned me that my credit card had been the subject of an attack. Really? I was holding it in my hand at the time of her call. "Yes", she said, "our systems have detected a potentially fraudulent transaction in a gift shop for £1.20. All small transactions are suspicious, she said". "What's the name of this gift shop?", I asked. "It's called LB Barnet", she replied. "Would that be the same LB Barnet as in London Borough of Barnet", I asked sarcastically, feeling my inner Meldrew about to burst forth. "No", she said, "It's a gift shop and the transaction has just been processed. I am about to block your card". I think I might have gone from Meldrew to Incredible Hulk at that stage as my other half reported sounds of growling, and shirt splitting as I tried to explain through gritted teeth that LB Barnet was not a gift shop and that the £1.20 was in fact the price for 30 minutes parking in Barnet. Maybe it was an omen that I was not supposed to be eating that bagel on my new no-carb diet? Maybe LB Barnet is really a nice gift shop selling things for £1.20. If they are, I don't give them long in this recession - especially by the time Barclaycard have blocked all their transactions as suspicious.

But the call of nature can be urgent, as we had found out the week before. Fortunately, in Central London, you are never far from McDonalds or a nice hotel. You've heard of Tea in The Ritz. Now think P in The Dorchester. We were in the West End when I suddenly needed a P. The bodily function, not the Letter or the Vegetable.

We wandered into a posh hotel so that I could make use of their facilities. I didn't bargain for personal assistance but, as usual, there was a man lurking in the men's toilet offering all kinds of "assistance" although he was very cagey about the services on offer, just saying "How can I help you today, Sir?".

I couldn't help thinking that, these days, if a man came up to you in a public toilet and asked if he could help you, outside of a five star hotel, he might soon be helping the Police with their enquiries.

He was standing next to a collection of after-shave bottles which would have put Selfridges ground floor to shame, a stack of paper towels, a shoe polishing kit and a saucer of carefully arranged £1 coins so, presumably, the services he had in mind were handing you a towel, in case you were too tired or lazy to pick up your own towel, spraying you with after-shave just like they do in Selfridges, but he was not as pretty as the girls who do it there, or offering to polish your shoes in the expectation of being rewarded with a bright shiny coin with the Queen's face on it to add to his collection.

I opted to unzip my own fly, thank you, pick up my own towel and passed on the Aramis and shoe-shine so left a few moments later feeling relieved but guilty for not availing myself of the services which the hotel had kindly laid on.

Am I the only person who thinks that these men who lurk in public toilets (shall we call them "toilet lurkers"?) are a bit superfluous and intrusive, these days? But there I go, moaning again.

In this final section of this month's blog, I thought I would examine the effect of the recession on retail prices but rather than having to stoop to checking out baked-bean prices in Aldi or knickers in Primark, I thought I would check out how the toffee-nosed upper classes were faring just up the road in Marylebone High Street.

There now follows a series of photographs of actual items in shop windows from Marylebone High Street. These photographs have not been retouched and those people of a nervous disposition should sit down before looking at the prices which just go to show that even Marylebonites (or should that be Marylebonians?) are not immune to hardship.

Was £925 for a single pink chair! Now £648. Bargain!

Bust or Vegas!

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

This blog is really a continuation of a blog posted earlier this month entitled "Vegas or Bust!".

The apparent transposition of the words Vegas and Bust, in this blog, is not an error but an attempt to place the ingredients of this blog in order of magnitude. Think of it, if you will, as a TV dinner with Chicken and Gravy. Have you ever noticed how it's called "Gravy with Chicken"? That's probably because it has more Gravy than Chicken in it! And so it is with part 2 of this blog. It might contain more Bust than Vegas - it might also contain nuts, and flash photography, for all I know, so it's best to get all that legal stuff out of the way at the start in case anyone of a faint disposition needs to leave the room. Feel free.

The bust stuff all started a about a year ago when I read about a new bra which comes off (deliberately) when you clap your hands. Perfect for nervous teenage boys out on their first date.

It was apparently the brainwave of an aptly named inventor called Randy Sarafan who allegedly became inspired by the idea of a bra coming off automatically when you clap, after he read about musical knickers in Syria, but let's not go there. Ever.

Since then, I have been secretly observing women in theatres everywhere to see if they clutched their chests as the applause began, but to date, sadly, I have observed no such thing.

I suspected that, whilst Randy loved the idea, Mrs Randy may not have been thrilled as presumably any loud noise would produce the same effect, including her musical knickers if they were turned up loud enough.

I was busting with excitement at the thought of seeing the clap-off bra in our shops in the UK, like Bravissimo, where, at around the same time, they introduced the largest bra ever made (Size L), as the concept of a "Clap-off Size L bra" would have been revolutionary as well as possibly dangerous.

And then, we cut back to Vegas where I espied a lady in the street dressed as a pirate accompanied by Capt. Jack Sparrow, who could quite possibly have been just such a customer for the Size L bra, but please judge for yourself:

Ah-har! I spy a pirate's chest of mammoth proportions!

Many moons ago, another well proportioned lady by the name of Nell Gwynne roamed the streets of London before she popped her clogs in 1687 at the ripe old age of 37. She had led an interesting life. Following Charles II's legalisation of the acting profession for women in 1660 she worked as an actress and scantily clad "orange-girl", selling small, sweet "china" oranges to the audience inside theatres for sixpence each.  Presumably, her future was neither bright nor Orange as she later became a lady of the night which was probably better paid than being either an actress or an orange-girl, before finally becoming the mistress to Charles II. But, you may say, what on earth has all this history nonsense got to do with this esteemed and suddenly educational blog? Well, I recently (literally) stumbled across the chalkboard below just off The Strand, advertising the USPs of the Nell Gwynne Tavern and fell in love with their brutal honesty: 

An ideal place for an extra-marital affair and skiving off work ... or both!

(Or maybe even a beer?!)

And so, now, we head back to Las Vegas (I am getting quite jet-lagged) and the root of all evil, or so we are told.

It's certainly true that you can gamble, drink alcohol, and consort with loose women - and probably all simultaneously if you are very skilled and ambidextrous - but where else in the world would you find a dangerous snake entwined around a bunny girl, posing for photographs with passers-by in the street for just $1 a squeeze?

Is it the year of the Rabbit or the Snake?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vegas or Bust!

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

If your idea of a traditional Christmas celebration involves stuffing a turkey, a tree with twinkly lights and poppers, prepare yourself for what follows - Christmas "Las Vegas" style.

The closest we got to the Queen's Speech this year was a speech by Roger the camp Virgin flight attendant about where we might find our parachute or the exits in the event of an emergency. And even poppers didn't help his mood when the lady in 34B insisted on her constitutional right to purchase 50ml of Beyoncé fragrance after they had parked the duty-free trolley. Even I, with my limited Bravissimo waiting-area experience, could tell she should wasn't a 34B kinda gal - more like a 34F. But that's another whole blog in itself.

Thankfully, the spirit of Christmas had not been totally overlooked by those thoughtful Virgin people. Oh no. "Turkey with all the trimmings" promised the festive menu - although mine consisted of a microwaved grey piece of protein covered in a gloopy slop, accompanied by one dried up carrot, a soggy brussel sprout and a dollop of mash. Maybe the "trimmings" were the red socks, a headset designed for people whose left ear is attached to their head higher up than their right ear, and an eye-mask (handy to wear if you would rather not see what you are eating).

US Immigration has always fascinated me. The old double-sided I-94 form which curiously asked you to declare whether you were or had at any previous time been a drug dealer has been replaced with an on-line ESTA and a new form which has moved the emphasis onto snails. Yes. You did read that correctly. Snails. The yanks have obviously had quite enough of the French and have decided that the best way to keep them out is to ban the importation of snails. Drug dealers are now ok, apparently, as the new form makes no mention of that, although you do still have to be photographed and fingerprinted like a scene from CSI Miami before entry is permitted, which is all very welcoming.

But not for the man in front of me who had no right arm. As the line of people in front of us grew shorter, his face grew longer as he mentally rehearsed what he might say when his turn finally came to place his right hand on the scanner - as he had no right hand. Luckily, there was a form for it, as you would imagine, and in a while he was on his merry way having had his left hand scanned, instead.

Soon we would all be in Sin City - and I don't mean Basildon.

There now follows a Wealth Warning. If you are coming to Las Vegas in the hope of getting 3 lemons, the safest bet is to go to directly to Waitrose. The latest slot machines are daunting and complex and, according to the helpful guide book, the best way to be guaranteed to win is to purchase a casino, which was slightly beyond our budget.

For the Brits, Vegas represents a step back in time as far as smoking, drinking and eating are concerned.

You can smoke inside the Casinos (they have scantily clad ladies selling cigars and cigarettes to positively encourage you to do so). Alcohol is free to players. And food portions are humungous - as are most of the natives.

The ubiquitous Vegas buffets threatened to completely derail my pre-Christmas diet by offering roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for breakfast, alongside toffee apples, candy floss, sushi, pancakes, maple syrup, fillet steak, waffles, bacon, ice cream, M&Ms, and practically anything else you could think of. No wonder Elvis put on weight.

On Fremont Street, a burger joint called the Heart Attack Grill, with the catch phrase "Taste Worth Dying For" promised to kill you with all the stuff you ever thought was bad for you.

Full sugar coke, full butterfat milk shakes, fries cooked in pure lard and burgers with names like "Double Bypass", "Triple Bypass" and "Quadruple Bypass" - and even cigarettes with no filter.

Payment in Loo!

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

JD Wetherspoon must be chuffed to bits this week after winning the "Loo of the Year" Award. And the story appeared in Caterer & Hotelkeeper above the Advanced Sommelier Award and the Chef of the Year, such was its obvious importance to the catering world.

Apparently, after assessing hundreds of toilets across the UK in the hospitality sector, independent judges (probably with very sore bottoms and chapped hands from all that cheap toilet paper and hand washing) voted JDW the winner of the Loo of the Year Awards, 2011 and C&H even published a picture of a golden loo which presumably was the "trophy" awarded to the lucky winner. It says nothing about the "runners-up" and I am trying very hard not to make any obvious remarks about running and loos for fear of being accused of running a smutty blog (again!).

Not to be outdone, however, the Japanese have beaten the golden loo hands down (or maybe I should say "trousers down"). The Telegraph ran an article today entitled "Japan builds lavatory encrusted with diamonds" and I am expecting no jokes about the Man with the Golden Bum or such like. This crystal loo has no fewer than 72,000 Swarovski crystals and is valued at over £64,000. Vajazzle that Essex!

According to the article, the crystal loo is dedicated to the god of lavatories (whoever that might be) and is intended to draw more customers to a posh shopping district, "in a year fraught with economic gloom and natural disaster". There's nothing like a crystal loo to make you forget the recession and go shopping!

Maybe, depending on the exact positioning of the crystals, you can gaze into them and see your future ... or your past ... or your bottom if the light is right?

One Japanese woman was reported to have said that she'd like to invite her friends and hold a party around it. That's women for you. They just love having a party in the loo - in case you wondered why they take so long in there.

Toilets have certainly come a long way since Roman times when they were made from stone, and patrons sat next to each other without any division walls, before wiping their behinds with a sponge on a stick.

But one thing the Romans did well was Wine - the drink, not the emotion.

And whilst I seem to have taken ages to get to the point of this month's blog, we have now finally arrived at "Wine".

Am I the only one in the restaurant industry prepared to admit that wine is mysterious?

All that sniffing like a cat on heat, swirling it around your tongue and then spitting it into a silver bowl. Why do we do that? Because allegedly, there could be anything in there as wine suppliers don't have to put a list of ingredients on the bottle. Remember the "cat litter" in the bottle scandal of 2008 when the Australian Wine Research Institute announced a list of around 40 "acceptable" chemicals in wine, including bentonite - an absorbent material, used in cat litter, which helped remove excess protein from white wine.

In the same article, The Mail claimed that the wine industry was "populated by liars, scroungers and cheats, administered by charlatans and snake-oil salesman and run on a system of misrepresentation and ritualised fraud", or was that banking?

Take that you twitchy-nosed sommeliers with your little silver grape lapel badges and condescending attitude.

But does it have to be like that? Or is there a new breed of honest sommelier willing to share their knowledge with you?

Tatler Magazine were kind enough to bestow their Sommelier of the Year award on our head sommelier at L'Oranger a couple of years ago and the young man concerned was certainly no snake-oil salesman. He made the entire wine experience a thrill for all and the "theatre" of knowledgeable wine service was certainly not lost on our customers.

So what if you could secretly check on your sommeliers? Underhand? Maybe. But no more so than Mystery Diners who check on everything else you do, at your request, to make sure you stay at the top of your game.

Well now there is a new service out there called Mystery Winer which I imagine is the kind of wine equivalent of Top Gear where a mystery man in a crash helmet, known as The Stig, races cars around a track to see what they're made of.

Would you let this man taste your wine?!

Mystery Winer guarantees anonymity in their reports so only the owners or operators get to see all the gory details.

Now owners can check on their sommelier or wine service team to make sure they are just screwing the corks and not the wine margins.

Rumour has it that the "Wine Stig" must be French or even that he is the illegitimate love child of Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke, born with advanced sense of smell and taste (except in clothes and helmets, obviously).

I remember attending a rather posh wine tasting in my early days as a partner in a City firm of lawyers. The senior partners were all sniffing and swirling whilst I gulped a glass of white in ignorance. "What did you think of the bouquet?", the wine expert asked me, condescendingly. Glancing around the room for a bouquet of flowers, I had no idea what he was talking about and so, in a vain effort to redeem myself, said "Lovely. It reminded me of Liebfraumilch". You could have heard a pin drop. It was like someone had brought a bacon sandwich to a barmitzvah. "Liebfraumilch!", exclaimed the expert, tidying away his props in disgust, "I 'ave never been so insulted".

How was I to know that liebfraumilch was actually wine made from sweeping up the leftovers off the floor - it tasted perfectly fine to me at under £3 for a bottle of Blue Nun! Oh, the good old Eighties. The flares ... the shoulder pads ... Knight Rider ... the Six Million Dollar Man - or in my case the six million dollar divorce (if my ex wife and her lawyers had had their way!).

And now, as it's nearly Christmas, it's time to round off with a quick Christmassy joke:

"Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?  Because you do all the work and the fat guy with the suit gets the credit!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Would you like Paella or Internet?

by Paul Singer - MD, London Fine Dining Group

As a youngster growing up in East London, there wasn't much talk of cultural excursions or fine-dining. Not unless you count a Friday night trip to Walthamstow dogs and a thin hotdog as culture and fine-dining.

So imagine everyone's surprise at me being persuaded to participate in a 7 day tour of classical Spain, including an authentic Flamenco dancing show. I could hardly contain my excitement. Spain for me held fond memories of a Full English by the beach, a piña colada and the sight of multiple severely burned Brits out in the midday sun looking more like lobsters than humans.

This trip promised to be very different. For a start, none of the places we visited seemed to contain any people who even spoke English, let alone knew what a Full English was. The food, as I was to learn during that week, would be presented in ever smaller brown dishes mostly filled with garlic or boiling oil - or both. Whether Tapas were invented as a form of torture to ward off the invading armies nobody knows, but the food, like the architecture, was Moorish rather than moreish.

Seville, the traditional home of Flamenco dance and Oranges, was to be our first stop. What I knew about Flamenco could be written on the side of a castanet - about 100 times over.

Now because nobody in the Flamenco theatre spoke any English, including the front of house staff, we were going to have get very good at miming. My wife looked more like a Flamenco dancer than a tourist as she tried, in vain, to mime Front Stalls and Sangria. Yes. They serve drinks in the theatre. How very civilised.

The show began with what appeared to be a fierce argument between the two main characters. The man, who might have been Fernando Alonso's lost twin appeared to be fighting with Sophia Loren's twin sister over a lace tablecloth. There was a lot of pulling at opposite ends of the tablecloth and a fair amount of stamping of the foot on the part of both the man and the woman, whilst a man who liked like Ronnie Corbett, only shorter and with thicker glasses, wailed at the back of the stage like someone was twisting his testicles. At first, I imagined that the rake of the stage made "Ronnie" look shorter but as he came forward to take a bow, he grew no taller at all. The only effect of him moving closer was that his eyes became more magnified by his glasses so he now resembled a halibut. I wondered if he was even able wear to those glasses outside without starting small bush fires.

Fernando and Sophia in a Sangria-tinted photo

"Ronnie" wails from the rear of the stage whilst Sophia and her friends

demonstrate the latest models of walking stick available.

Then several younger girls pranced around the stage demonstrating their tablecloths and showing how hard they could stamp their feet if they didn't get their own way, whilst "Fernando" showed "Sophia" what he thought of her mother, who had now joined in the tablecloth debate.

Fringe Benefits - Sophia's mum and her tablecloth.

As the night and the Sangria wore on, I became less interested in the tablecloths and more interested in the young girls who by this time had decided that the long frilly dresses they wore were impractical for stamping and so had hitched them up to their waists so that their legs had more room to stamp. It was a kind of noisier Spanish version of the can-can, if you will.

The hotel in Seville was interesting. The food service finished before dinner and there was no room service. The local supermarket shelves were filled to bursting point with unusual items, none of which I recognised other than small cartons of what in the UK might contain orange juice for children's packed lunches only here they were filled with WINE. They were packed in 3s and 3 boxes of wine could be had for less than 1 Euro which has to be excellent value, whatever the Euro was worth that week.

The hotel was advertised with WiFi. Perfect. Just time before my carton of wine, to check some emails, I thought. Wrong.

The access code for the WiFi, which had to be retrieved by begging at reception, was longer than a Flamenco dancer's dress. Once I had typed in all 15 digits and letters, I was greeted with a Spanish version of WiFi which was more like Broad Bean than Broad Band. I wondered why Google took nearly 5 minutes to load the home search page. I tested the speed. 0.1Meg. Dial up or carrier pigeon would have been faster.

The man(uel) in reception kindly volunteered that when guests reported slow internet, he often suggested that they bring their laptop to the bar where apparently the signal was stronger. I fell for it and arrived in the bar with my shiny laptop to find several other bewildered guests also clutching their laptops waving them about like water diviners in a vain attempt to get either a stronger signal or higher speed of connection. One enterprising guest was even balanced on a windowsill hanging over a 30 foot drop where there was obviously a better connection, albeit coupled with a slight risk of death.

I gave up and had some more sangria.

Cordoba was much the same. The tapas were better but the internet was worse. Obviously, the classical Spanish had no need for new fangled things like internet when they had Paella and Flamenco.

Our final stop was Granada. The city - not the motorway services on the M4.

The Alhambra was spectacular as advertised even if I did (deliberately) annoy the Blue Badge guide by calling it the Abracadabra!

Now, the Sultan who commissioned its construction obviously knew a thing or three about matrimony as he had several wives. And he cleverly put them on a different floor of the palace for a bit of peace and quiet. He also insisted that all eunuchs who attended to his wives and became musicians were blinded before being employed. I can't imagine that going down too well in the Employment Tribunal. "So your contract specified that before you could commence employment, you had to be castrated and blinded by your employer?".   

We were advised by our Guide to try the local delicacy - Roast Baby Suckling Pig. But we were warned that in Spain we would be presented with "everything but the squeak". She was right. There were some parts of the pig which even James Herriot hadn't seen before but it was all there - roasted and plated-up before your very eyes - but it did make a nice change to recognise at least parts of the meal and not have it all served in small brown terracotta pots covered in boiling oil and garlic.