Table talk
1. And the next business to be destroyed… Restaurateur and design guru Sir Terence Conran is another entrepreneur opening his heart to the authors of The Adventure Capitalists, published last week by Kogan Page.
Among various tales, he recalls the conversation with a friend which led to him setting up the Soup Kitchen in 1953. "Look, we've got to think of something where we don't have to employ chefs, who are terrible people. They're rude, they're belligerent, they're dishonest, they do everything they can to destroy a business. Can we think of a formula that doesn't need chefs?"
I wonder if he still holds the same opinions and, if he does, what his kitchen brigades think.
1. Ever get that sinking feeling? Prue Leith also features prominently in the above-mentioned book. Her most embarrassing moment came when she was asked to join the board of directors of her then-employer for lunch - which she had prepared.
"The host leaned over the salad bowl and started sort of examining the lettuce leaves and I thought, ‘Well, he's never seen radicchio before and he just doesn't know what a designer salad is.' I was being really smug, and then he leant in to pick up, as I thought, a leaf. What he picked out was a piece of string, which he pulled slowly out. The string turned into a chain and then out popped a bath plug."
At least, she says, it was proof she had washed the lettuce.
1. What do you call a publican with an IQ of 80? A publican in Worcestershire has run into trouble after chalking up a Welsh joke on his pub notice board. "What do you call a Welshman with an IQ of 180?" wrote Tony Goodwin of the Great Western pub in Bewdley. "Answer: a village."
After a complaint that the joke was racist, the politically incorrect landlord replaced "Welshman" with "publican".
But Goodwin still doesn't quite seem to have got the hang of it. He told the Birmingham Post: "If the person who complained wants to come in, he can have a free drink - provided he leaves his sheep outside."
1. Feng shui? We have no position on that The hotel industry was reeling this week after seeing the results of a remarkable poll carried out by reservations company Expotel. In a "short telephone survey" of the leading hotel groups operating in London, intrepid researchers discovered that none were taking advantage of the ancient Oriental art of feng shui. Surprise, surprise.
1. Suppose he finally saw the light An anonymous thief who stole a charity box from a pub in the early 1970s has stunned staff by repaying the debt, with interest.
Landlady Angela Warren was shocked when she opened an envelope to discover a letter of remorse and £50 in cash. In his letter, the repentant thief recounts how he stole the collection box while walking out of her pub with a friend more than 20 years ago.
Staff at the Cat & Fiddle Harvester in Christchurch, Dorset, now plan to forward the cash to the intended destination of the original collection: the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
