If you caught the BBC Three programme The Roadkill Chef a fortnight ago then you might be familiar with the idea of taking the 'murder' out of meals.
However, if you are anything like me, then you wouldn't have watched it for moral reasons, but out of the morbid hope for drama. There was a heart-wrenching scene when the roadkill chef Fergus Drennan stood by a recently killed badger. Crouching down, a single tear in his eyes, he nudged the little pulverised chap, and told how badgers bury, and often wail for, their dead. It was a beautiful moment, I have to admit, for the badger, in one last throw of the dice, to rear its head and plant a TB-laden bite on Fergus's hand. What would he have done? Meekly prise its jaws from his hand and nurse it to health or finish it off with the car jack? In fact, what actually happened, was he popped him straight into his pot.
Anyway, my point is actually in relation to Fifteen Restaurant, where wayward youths are given the chance to turn their lives around. But not in the eyes of everyone. After a booked customer discovered that a chef at Fifteen had been found guilty on an assault charge, he was in contact to immediately cancel his booking, citing his abhorrence to the notion that a man convicted of assault should cook his meal.
I have to admit I don't follow his logic. I'd like to know whether the protest was (a) for moral reasons, and the customer was appalled at the idea of a second chance. Or (b) for animal rights reasons, and if he ordered a steak he assumed that, once a thug then always a thug, the chef would beat the cow to death with his own hands. Or (c) whether he had in his mind the notion of a Victorian-esque career-criminal, when some people were, apparently, just plain evil. Did he envisage the ex-con standing over a cauldron, probably wearing a cape and tall top-hat, dripping arsenic into the cream of broccoli soup? I just don't know.
Give him a break. Everyone deserves a second chance. Even badgers.
