The Driftwood Bar, Sandown, where owner Sean Ware had a difference of opinion with a customer
THE VIEW FROM HERESANDOWN bar proprietor Sean Ware distinguished himself in the Basil Fawlty stakes when he called a customer a "hypocrite and liar".
He also told him to pick his toys up, get back in his pram and "don’t bother contacting me again".
Mr Ware insists the customer’s complaint was the only one he’s had all season, so he’s done pretty well for a novice in the art of insult.
But he’s got a long way to go before he can achieve the heights of rudeness achieved by the real maestros.
Basil Fawlty wasn’t bad, Emma Thompson’s looking good but the absolute master of discourtesy was the late London restaurateur Peter Langan. Mr Ware, being in the same business, should certainly study his technique if he wants to progress.
"Hypocrite and liar" looks frankly feeble beside Mr Langan’s repertoire.
Consistently drunk, he once staggered over to a table where Princess Margaret was dining with the Earl of Harewood.
Having been told she had eaten a coddled egg, he greeted her by asking "And how was the ****ing egg, then?"
He then said: "I’m amazed you’d be bothered to go out, just to eat one of them.
"Don’t they know how to do them at the palace?"
As, a finale, he had to be physically restrained from goosing her royal highness as she left. And when a customer presented him with a cockroach that was roaming Langan’s restaurant, the proprietor guffawed and swallowed it with a swig of champagne.
Makes Mr Ware look positively urbane.
Even when he was paying a compliment, Mr Langan contrived to be offensive. He told Prince Albert of Monaco, son of the late Grace Kelly, "your darlin’ mother had such great tits".
I once met Mr Langan and am delighted to say he was on cracking form.
He came, spectacularly drunk, into the bookshop where I was working.
"Where the **** are your ****ing cookery books?" he demanded of me.
He swayed around the shelves and then tried to pay for his selection. When I refused his card, primarily because it had somebody else’s name on it, he thrust his face into mine.
"You’re not only unlovely to look at," he said. "You’re horrible as well."
That’s tough? Try Bomb Surprise where there are real bombs
I AM curiously addicted to BBC’s Masterchef series, despite loathing almost everybody who appears on it, the presenters, the contestants (particularly if they are 'celebrities’) and the pretentious foodies whom we have to watch masticating in the most disgusting manner before they pronounce judgment.
There are millions starving, maties. Don’t go all tragic just because the trout needs a bit more seasoning.
I am enraged right from the start, when presenter Gregg Wallace shouts: "Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this!"
What rubbish. I can think of much tougher cooking than poncing about in a shiny kitchen with no washing-up and the ingredients neatly arranged in front of you.
Cooking in Kabul, 40 degrees of heat outside and the Taliban all set to muss up your Poire Belle Helene, would be tougher.
Cooking in a slum in downtown Calcutta with giant rats scuttling round your feet would not be a breeze, either.
But for real toughness, try my kitchen when, over the Christmas period, various elements of the family (many of them noticeably mad) descend for my annual cheese souffle.
By the time I’ve greeted the mad relations, one of whom has a streaming cold, and we’ve argued about the rules of Cluedo and somebody’s miffed about God knows what but you can just tell and I’ve unwisely sought refuge in the sherry bottle, the souffle is a considerable endurance test.
I lurch around the kitchen, breaking eggs, grating cheese, whipping and beating, downing sherry and eating salted cashews straight from the bag and wondering how on earth this annual torture became a tradition.
Tough? I’ll say.
That Greg Wallace is such a big girl’s blouse.