I don’t have many names to drop.
And my tragedy is that, most of the few that I do are either unknown outside my immediate age group and demographic, or would fail to recognise me back if I went up to them and said ‘hello’.
The truth is that God made me for the ‘E’ or ‘F’ list, and it’s where I belong.
However, I saw in the Sunday Times that the great Anton Mosimann is finally hanging up his skillet after 40 years or more of preparing top grub. His private diner’s club in Belgravia once numbered me among its members, as he was endorsing a couple of products that my company sold. I like to think we got on rather well.
The first time I went to see him I was almost incontinently star-struck. It was in the late eighties, when men like me wore light beige summer suits in hot weather, and it was onto to top of the trouser area of my beige summer suit that I accidentally squirted most of the contents of the soap dispenser in the club’s ‘gentlemen’s rest room just before our meeting.
I hardly need tell you that this is not a good look. Or that it is not improved by trying to get rid of it with water that simply created a green lather around my crotch. I didn’t so much look like someone who had had an accident, as someone who had had an accident in the middle of a gangrene convention. The tie wasn’t long enough to cover it, nor the suit generously cut enough to disguise it, so I just went right on in.
Anton was incredibly nice, and looked me in the eye as much as he could, for all the world looking like a senior TV chef who is desperately trying to suppress a laugh. After that, we got on fine, and he made me his signature bread and butter and marmalade pudding every time I set foot on the premises, which was obviously quite often.
A few years ago, and having not seen him for a quarter of a century, I spotted an old man on his hands and knees outside Anton’s club in West Halkin Street, and wondered what series of events could have conspired to deal someone such a low blow. To my astonishment, when I walked past and looked at his face, it was Mr Mosimann.
Without batting an eyelid, he looked at me, greeted me like an old friend, and then said:
‘I expect you are wondering what I am doing on the pavement like this.’
I agreed that I was.
He jerked his right thumb back in the direction of his club and said:
‘Turn round very gently, and you will see faces in the windows of the club. Yes?’
I did and there were.
He went on: ‘I am trying to prove to my employees that, if a 70 year old top chef can be bothered to pick up the cigarette butts off the pavement and the steps into his club, then perhaps they might.’
I looked back at the building, and a couple of heads retreated rapidly behind the curtains.
It is one of the best lessons in example and humility that I have ever seen.
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