Table talk

It would be all right if he didn't draw on the napkins

It must be a nice feeling if a major artist offers you a sketch as a tip after eating in your restaurant. This was exactly what happened to two breakfast waitresses in Sunderland's Seaburn Hotel almost 30 years ago. The story emerged when the former Seaburn, which became a Swallow, was renamed again as a Marriott last week. Further investigation revealed that LS Lowry had done this several times for staff at the hotel, where he stayed a number of times in the early 1970s. However, not all of them had known what they were being given. "I believe that several people didn't think much of the sketches and binned them," said the longest-serving staff member still at the hotel.

Now he doesn't even go off half-Cocked

The head chef at the Speech House Hotel near Coleford in Gloucestershire is known by his workmates as Simon Cocking. His actual name, however, is Simon Williams. The reason for his dual identity is quite simple. It's not that he's not a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, it's that when he recently married Rhian Williams she refused to take his surname - Cocking. So he took hers. He said: "She just didn't like Cocking, I don't know why. I quite liked it."

Order in German and you get the ersatz stuff

Starbucks is obviously too successful for its own good. It seems our bumptious American cousins overestimated its popularity and miffed the Swiss recently when they opened a coffee shop in Zurich. It's not that the locals mind foreigners setting themselves up to make a better cup of coffee than them, or that they hold a grudge against a nation that once complained about the size of the holes in that tastiest of Swiss exports, Emmenthal cheese. What they did mind was being told that if they wanted a Starbucks coffee, they had to order in English.

Sounds like grounds for an investigation

Thieves hit the jackpot when they broke into the newly refurbished Madisons Coffee lounge on London's Fleet Street. They managed to make off with the coffee bar's entire stock of tea and coffee, but not a penny was taken from the till. "They're obviously men of taste," said Madisons operational marketing director, John Tonks. "Had we known they were coming, we'd have left out the money and hidden our tea and coffee!"

Giving it some wellie

A chef in Hong Kong, known only as Uncle Kai, has become famous for killing rats in his new restaurant. According to the Apple Daily newspaper, he dispatched 60 in just six days. Before dawn each morning, he dons rubber boots and gloves and blocks off a section of the restaurant where the rats hide. He then scares them out and crushes them underfoot as they try to escape. Could this mean the house specialities include such savoury delights as sweet-and-sour rat, or perhaps stir-fried rat in black bean sauce?

Leeks lacking, bacon backed off, trout out

The compilers of the Retail Price Index have rubbed salt into the wounds of Welsh pride by chopping their national symbol, the leek, from their list of essential buys just weeks after TV presenter Anne Robinson consigned the Welsh themselves to oblivion in the BBC's Room 101 programme. The leek is not alone in its fall from grace - streaky bacon, rainbow trout and salad cream are also slipping down the nation's grocery list. Consumers are now lavishing their cash on salmon fillets, organic produce, French sticks and herbal teabags.