Table talk

But what about the chips and beans?

Graham Harris, head chef of London's Beach Blanket Babylon, won the Spam chef of the year trophy last week. Harris used the famous chopped pork and ham in a tin to make a tempura of Spam with sweet chilli and a mango and papaya salad, Spam ravioli with summer vegetables and, incredibly, Spam beef Wellington. Helen Lynn, Spam brand manager explained: "Spam is such a versatile ingredient." Indeed, apparently so versatile that it can transform itself into an entirely different meat. Other awards went to Peter Stringfellow as celebrity Spammite of the year, and Dad's Army's Bill Pertwee for lifetime services to Spam.

They'll still have a crowd in the gents East Anglian brewer Greene King has introduced television screens on the front of its beer pumps so that football-loving customers can now order drinks without the fear of missing that crucial goal. Lucky Jim's in Hampshire is the first pub to pioneer the four-inch miniscreens which should help lessen the half-time crush at the bar.

Another passenger handed him in at King's Cross A JD Wetherspoon fan went on a pub crawl that took him a distance of 988 miles in one day. Railway signal engineer Roger Lightfoot, 54, said: "I set myself the target of visiting at least one Wetherspoon hostelry in each city, as well as other places en route."

Lightfoot left Faversham in Kent on the first train to London at 5.32am. He connected with the 7am from King's Cross and was in Edinburgh by 11.30am. He then travelled on to Glasgow, before arriving back in London at 8.30pm. "It was a rather ambitious journey. I relied on the trains running to schedule and taxi-drivers knowing where to find the nearest Wetherspoon pub. It was an extremely tiring day," he said.

The copywriter was that dizzy blonde A hard-hitting campaign against sexual harassment in New Zealand's hotel industry may, by an ironic twist, be in breach of the Human Rights Act. A series of spoof job vacancies have appeared in newspapers looking for a "Male Chauvinist Chef" or "Willing Waitress."

One ad reads: "You'll get comments from men about your ample bottom and you'll smile sweetly and take it like a true professional." It then advises anyone working in such an environment to contact the Human Rights Commission. But a law firm has said that because the ads use stereotypes in a way which could cause offence and appear to be genuine ads in the situations vacant column, they may breach advertising and fair trading codes as well as human rights.