Panicky in the UK

Originally published on AngloINFO Blogs on 25/03/11
With consumer confidence crashing to record lows in the UK in February 2011, it is fair to say that the UK is edging towards something of a tipping point.

That tipping point could be reached this Saturday, when the Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) March for the Alternative – a protest against the damage that the government’s “deep and rapid spending cuts” is doing to the UK – descends on central London.

Numbers for the march are not definite – most estimates say “several hundred thousand people” are expected – so if you’re not planning on joining the march, it might be a good idea to avoid central London tomorrow.

However, the wiser among you may wish to get involved, and if so you’ll need to get yourself to Victoria Embankment – between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges – by about 11:00.

The full route of the march will take it west along the Thames, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, along Whitehall, past 10 Downing Street, along Piccadilly and in to Hyde Park, where Labour leader Ed Miliband will be speaking.

Cutting confidence

As for consumer confidence, that is measured by the Nationwide Consumer Confidence Index, which was started by the Nationwide Building Society in May 2004.

According to Nationwide, it “measures the population’s view of the current position and future prospects of the UK.”

It does so by asking people:

• what they think of the current economic situation
• what they think the economic situation will be like in six months’ time
• what they think of the current employment situation
• what they think the employment situation will be like in six months’ time
• their expectations for their household income in six months’ time

The drop to an all-time low at the end of last month was driven mostly by a crash in people’s expectations, with only 14% of people saying they thought the UK’s economic situation would be “good” in six months’ time (compare to 39% in February 2010), and 42% saying they thought it would be “bad” (compared to 15% in February 2010).

Meanwhile 63% of people said they thought there would be “not many/few jobs available” in six months’ time – treble the proportion that felt the same way when the Index began in May 2004.

Don’t cut culture

When capitalism lets us down we can always turn to culture to enrich our lives, and while London may have some of the world’s steepest ticket prices, it also has plenty of free museums and exhibitions.

So if you’re feeling the pinch as much as the rest of us, why not try one of the following free events in the capital.

Oh, and by the way, the March for the Alternative is free to attend as well.

Free events in London

This is Whitechapel at Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX

Photography by Ian Berry documenting the changing face of Whitechapel in the 1970s as the established Jewish community moved away and a south Asian population took their place.

Beat the Champ at The Barbicam, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS

Cory Angel’s latest art installation, featureing 14 bowling video games from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Cafechurch at Caffe Nero, 31-33 Warwick Way, SW1V 1QS

Churchgoers and non-churchgoers discuss issues such as fair trade, the environment, stress, adoption, parenting, debt and divorce over coffee. Fourth Wednesday of the month.

Beatrix Potter: An Awkward Education at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL

Still life drawings by the author of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”.

Who is The Guardian’s Secret Footballer?

Originally published on Talking Sports on 04/04/11

As anyone who has seen any of the three Goal! films will know, attempts to dramatise the football world are, and I hate to generalise, disgustingly hideous flops.

Now you could make the easy mistake of confusing this hammed-up, wooden, predictable, celebrity-ridden piss fest of a trilogy for a tongue-in-cheek, postmodern masterpiece, or you could say: “Hold on a minute. These films are probably shit because real-life football is imbued with enough of a genuine sense of drama to make any staged version of a 94th minute winner seem like a poor imitation of the real thing.”

And you’d be right to do so.

But football doesn’t just have drama on the pitch. It has air rifles at training grounds, people shagging each other’s girlfriends, rivals saying nasty things about one another and the farcical spectacle of men getting dressed up in glorified PE kits.

It’s like Eastenders stuffed into the mouth of Lock, Stock and shat into the toilet bowl of Carry On.

What makes Eastenders so great, apparently, is its history of baddies, and everyone’s favourite moment is when a new baddy appears. But there’s only one thing that can top a new baddy, and that is a baddy with a secret identity.

As Guardian readers will know, football has just acquired its own mystery baddy in the shape of The Secret Footballer (TSF), a Saturday columnist who “lifts the lid on the world of football”.

Conjecture about who he might be is, well, I won’t say flooding online forums, invading pub airspace and sending footballers into paroxysms of terror – I recently met John Salako, not exactly the dumbest ex-footballer out there, and he’d never even heard of the column – but it has got a certain group of people feeling quite curious.

So, I’ve combed through TSF’s 12 columns, picked out any hints as to his identity, and tried to figure out who the fucker is.

Here are my findings:

He is a Premiership player, who grew up on a council estate. He has played for at least two Premiership clubs, has an agent, and says he has played for “great managers” – one of whom he played under for “a long time” – and “one or two where I would happily have faked my own death if it meant not working with them a minute longer”.

He has also said: “Another manager I played for was more proactive. He felt he had to step in when he became concerned about the card school on the back of the coach getting out of hand.”

He knows a fair bit about Twitter, and was once “fined for going out to a pub with a couple of friends while injured”.

He is “a more senior member of the squad”, he seems to refer to Tottenham quite a lot, says he will need hip and knee replacements when he retires, and has been in contract negotiations where “the Bosman ruling hung over proceedings”.

He has a lifelong Scandinavian friend in football, played with “a group of French players… at one club who were not interested in communicating with anybody else”, and has a wife and, probably, kids.

Astonishingly, he also once won a free-kick at Old Trafford. This, plus other comments, means I am assuming he is an outfield player.

Who could it be?

I’m automatically discounting Manchester United players, because they are likely to be too high profile to do something like this. In addition, most of their British players haven’t been at more than one club – bar Rio Ferdinand, who ticks a lot of the boxes (married; Twitter user; played for great managers; been at a few clubs; probably has won a few free kicks at Old Trafford) and Michael Owen, as he has nothing else to do. By the same token I am ruling out Chelsea (Lampard and Cole are unmarried; John Terry is a one-club man) and Arsenal players.

We can also dismiss many newly-promoted teams, as most of their players haven’t got much Premiership experience or played for more than one Premiership team. So, count out Wigan, Blackpool (James Beattie is their only viable option, but he’s a posh lad, and in all likelihood didn’t grow up on a council estate), Wolves, Blackburn (David Dunn is the only option there, but he hasn’t played under any great managers), Stoke and West Brom (only Nicky Shorey seems to fit the bill, but he hasn’t played that much in the Premiership, and only for one arguably kind-of-great manager, Martin O’Neill). In addition, no one at Everton fits the bill.

So that leaves us with quite a small group of players that it could be:

Manchester City – Joleon Lescott, James Milner, Gareth Barry
Tottenham Hotspur – Jonathan Woodgate, Jermaine Jenas, Peter Crouch (not married), Jermain Defoe (not married)
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Zat Knight, Kevin Davies
Newcastle – Sol Campbell, Joey Barton, Alan Smith, Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Damien Duff, Jonathan Greening, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
Sunderland – Titus Bramble, Anton Ferdinand, Kieran Richardson
Aston Villa – Luke Young, Stephen Warnock, Richard Dunne, Emile Heskey, Darren Bent
West Ham – Matthew Upson (not married), Wayne Bridge (not married), Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Bowyer, Kevin Phillips, James McFadden (not married)

TSF said in his April 9 column that “My wife told me that last week… I came in for a particularly vicious barrage after miscontrolling a pass”.

Jonathan Woodgate, Jonathan Greening and Emile Heskey didn’t play on April 2/3 weekend. Zat Knight, Stephen Warnock, Titus Bramble, Sol Campbell, Alan Smith, James Milner, Gareth Barry and Kieran Richardson also didn’t play, so that leaves us with:

Manchester United – Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen
Manchester City – Joleon Lescott,
Tottenham Hotspur – Jermaine Jenas
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Kevin Davies
Newcastle –Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Damien Duff, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
Sunderland –Anton Ferdinand
Aston Villa – Luke Young, Richard Dunne, Darren Bent
West Ham –Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Lee Bowyer, Kevin Phillips

If we’re after someone who has played with a bunch of Frenchies, is big pals with a Scandinavian and has played under “great managers”, one for “a long time”, I’d say Lescott, Jenas, Barton and Anton Ferdinand are out. For my money, that also rules out Darren Bent and Damien Duff, and probably Luke Young and Richard Dunne. This leaves:

Manchester United – Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Kevin Davies
Newcastle –Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
West Ham –Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Lee Bowyer, Kevin Phillips

In all likelihood we could also get rid of Bowyer and Phillips.

Another clue is that, on Twitter, @TSFGuardian follows Michael Owen; Rio Ferdinand; Chris Kamara; Robbie Savage; Radiohead; Oasis and Biffy Clyro.
For those reasons, I’d knock off Rio and Owen.

Most people in web forums seem to think it is Kevin Davies, who is very active on Twitter and apparently mates with The Guardian’s Barry Glendenning

But from what’s left, I’d go for Murphy. He’s been around a few clubs, arguably played for some great managers (Hodgson, Dario Gradi) and some clowns (Houllier), was around for the tail end of Liverpool’s Spice Boy period (fits with the card school and the Owen Twitter follow). He also played with a few French players at Liverpool, and a few Scandinavians.

It’s also fair to say that, even though the column must be quite liberally edited, TSF must be reasonably intelligent, which rules out Joe Cole, Andy Johnson and Bobby Zamora for my money.

So, who do you think it is?

Sporting Heroes – Roger Milla

Originally published on Talking Sports on 05/06/11
Nine years to the day after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the world was changed forever, I did something that would rock the foundations of many people’s worlds to a similar extent – I gave up watching football.

That last bit might be a gross exaggeration, but this kind of hyperbole is typical of the elevated status that football has come to occupy in the 21st century – just pick up any tabloid today and try not to laugh while reading the overly-dramatic back-page stories about, well, nothing really – and is the main reason why, in September 2010, I decided I could not be arsed with it anymore.

I lasted a few months and then eventually got sucked back in – partially because it made it easier to talk to hairdressers and boring men at work functions – but it got me wondering what had ever attracted me to football in the first place.

Playing football every day in the playground as a kid probably had a part in it, plus the fact that most of my mates were football fans, but then I’ve never been one to be swung by public opinion (I am happy to say that I have never read a Dan Brown book and didn’t watch a single second of the latest series of MasterChef).

So like a veteran fisherman I grab hold of my memory-fishing rod and toss it deep into the recesses of my hippocampus. As I feel the tug of something bulky and fairly old, I rip it through the rest of my mushy brain (made mushy by drinking too much beer while watching football in pubs, I might add) – past this superb own goal by Forest Green’s Wayne Hatswell

this ridiculous Saudi Arabia goal in the 1994 World Cup

and other cherished football memories – and then find a dancing pensioner (well, almost) sticking out the top of my skull.

Yes, Roger Milla. He must be the reason I got taken in by football.

Italia ’90 was my first real football memory. It came before the obese publicity/cash machine that is the Premier League and, in my head at least, embodies the pure reckless joy that football has the ability to foster but is now so utterly denuded of.

If anyone personified that pure reckless joy it was Roger Milla. Despite his being 38, I, like so many others, felt drawn to him because he played football like it was played in the playground. He didn’t seem self-conscious, or particularly technically able, he looked scruffy and he took delight in everything he did on the pitch, as became most evident when he scored and went to dance around the corner flag – an act that may well provoke a booking for time wasting in today’s Premier League.

I won’t bore you with a chronological walk through his Italia ’90 – you can relive his best bits on YouTube – but will say that he had me in hysterics when he robbed Rene Higuita, Colombia’s showboating keeper, of the ball about 40 yards out and went on to slot into an open net.

Higuita was a bit of a laugh too, and one of the tournament’s highlights, but in many ways he embodied the arrogance of the most repugnant footballers (and most of today’s millionaire players) – and when Milla robbed him of the ball, it was like reckless playground football was taking the game back from pompous corporatism and saying: “Oi, football is supposed to be a laugh, a bit of fun – keep it that way.”

Shame the corporates didn’t listen.

Turning the tide

Originally published in Travel Trade Gazette as "Time to go Dutch?" (p.56 of digital edition) on 11/03/11

Most people think they know what Amsterdam and the Netherlands are about, but these perceptions are built on little more than lazy stereotypes, as Ian Shine found out on a Unesco World Heritage Sites trip with the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions

Say “Amsterdam” to most people and they immediately think of “coffee shops” and the red light district, but the reality is that both make up an ever-shrinking proportion of a city steeped in history.

An initiative called Project 1012 will see 40% of the city’s brothels by 2014, while 26 of its coffee shops are also earmarked for closure.

Such re-invention is nothing new for the Dutch, who have been at the forefront of innovation in so many fields for the past 500 years - from their Golden Age of painters in the 17^th century to their “total football” of the early 1970s, but most notably in their architecture and town planning.

Many of The Netherlands’ nine Unesco World Heritage Sites reflect this, as I found out when I visited three of them.

Seventeenth-century canal ring

What Unesco says: “A masterpiece of hydraulic engineering and town planning. Testimony to a significant period in the history of the modern world.”

What it is: Three huge canals that wrap around the south and west of Amsterdam’s central old town, constructed when the Dutch realised around 1600 that they needed to expand the city to house its increasing population. Not that interesting perhaps, but what happened next had a profound influence on how the rest of the world would be put together over the next 300 years, as Piet van Winden, director of the canals’ forthcoming Het Grachtenhuis museum, explains to me.

“Instead of destroying the city and creating a new one [as was common practice] they drained swampland and built something new around the city,” he says.

What remains is a grand canal city in the spirit of Venice and St Petersburg, packed with elaborate but skinny houses (taxes were levied according to width of canal front taken up). The grandest of these are on Herengracht (Gentlemen’s Canal), which is nearest to the old town, and the swankiest of those are found on “the golden bend” directly south of the old town between Leidsestraat and Vijzelstraat.

The new Het Grachtenhuis museum, due to open on April 1, is styling itself as a “gateway” to the canal ring with interactive exhibitions ­-­­ including a room where visitors experience city views as if from the bottom of the canal ­- providing an overview of the area and its history. It will be located in a restored mansion at Herengracht 386.

Who will fancy it: Older culture-heads who like Venice, St Petersburg or Prague, and shopping addicts of any age who will love the boutique “nine streets” shopping district locked inside the canal ring.

Rietveld Schroder House

What Unesco says: ”An icon of the modern movement in architecture and an outstanding expression of human creative genius in its purity of ideas and concepts.”

What it is: A somewhat sci-fi house built by Gerrit Rietveld in 1924 and located in Utrecht, an easy 30-minute train ride from Amsterdam. Its simple horizontal planes, stark whites and primary colours represented a radical architectural move that is still cutting edge today. Comissioned by Mrs Truus Schroder-Schrader, who wanted a house where the boundaries between rooms and interior and exteriors were less defined, the upstairs features completely movable walls and windows that fold out of the house, as well as wacky but practical space and time-saving contraptions, such as a handle to close a downstairs door from upstairs. The house looks like a Mondrian painting and embodies the concepts of the De Stijl art movement. It is now a museum that really has to be seen to be believed.

It contains Rietveld’s famous and surprisingly comfy red and blue chair, a copy of which can tried out on the top floor of the Centraal Museum Utrecht.

Who will fancy it: Younger, trendy types who might like The White Stripes (their second album was called De Stijl and lead singer Jack White is a fan of Rietveld) or anyone interested in cultural breaks.

Beemster Polder

What Unesco says: “Innovative and intellectually imaginative landscape. Had a profound and lasting impact on reclamation projects in Europe and beyond.”

What it is: Essentially the bottom of a former lake that has been drained and turned into an inhabitable area which sits below sea level around thirty miles north of Amsterdam.

Like the canal ring, Beemster was developed in the 17^th century thanks to Dutch innovation that used windmills to pump the lake water into newly built canals. The area is full of picturesque pyramidal houses that were designed as such to allow farmers to store mounds of hay in the roof, although new houses in the area are still built this way.

It’s like a tranquil paradise here, barely a soul about, and there is a hint of the otherworldy about its openness. “God created the world but the Dutch made their own land,” says my guide, Fleur Brouwers. Maybe they even got one up on him, I think.

The Beemster is also great for admiring fields of tulips, which reach their best in mid-April, and its attractiveness and flatness make it ideal for cyclists.

Bikes are easy to hire in the Netherlands, with many hotels offering them along with specialist hire shops. As Fleur says of the Dutch, “we have more bikes than we do inhabitants”.

Who will fancy it: People who like cycling or walking holidays or just getting away from it all amid tranquil surroundings.

Life and its crises

Book review: Michael Cunningham - By Nightfall

Michael Cunningham is renowned for a spare prose style that is very much in evidence in "By Nightfall", but this book is notable for much more than its style.

As much scattered with esoteric literary and artistic references - from the "stately, plump Buck Mulligan" of Joyce's "Ulysses" to sexual desire in Thomas Mann's novels; Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus" to Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" - as it is saturated with the minutiae of everyday life and emotion, and the world's current economic climate.

The story follows the tribulations of Peter and Rebecca Harris - an art dealer and an editor - who have been married for 20-odd years. Rebecca's troubled and much-younger brother, Ethan (aka Mizzy) comes to stay with them, and when Peter accidentally sees Mizzy naked in the shower, mistaking him for Rebecca through the steam of the bathroom, the mid-life crisis that has been niggling at him throughout the book is given an injection of sexually-led pace. Peter's obsession with Mizzy and his sexuality slowly build (I won't reveal details for fear of ruining anybody's reading) to a crescendo near the end of the book, but the real story here is three people going through crises while the world goes through its own crisis around them.

Mizzy is one of life's wanderers: a perpetual quitter with no specific goal in life and an on-off drug habit to cope with. Now in his early 20s, the realisation of his adulthood casts him into the first real crisis of his carefree life.

Meanwhile, Rebecca's magazine is on the edge of bankruptcy and is only able to survive by allowing a morally questionable takeover. Thrown on top of her job fears is her shaky relationship with Peter, which often leads to tense face-offs in taxis home from parties or in bed either side of sleep.

Another major thread of the book is the world recession, and how affluent people like Peter and Rebecca rarely feel sincerely guilty about living a life beyond the means of so many other Americans. Living in something of a bubble, unaffected by the recession - Peter sells a bronze urn covered in obscenities to an art collector for an unstated but no doubt obscene amount of money -- the couple only really come into contact with the fears of the masses when Rebecca's job briefly looks like it could be uncertain.

Peter occasionally remarks that he doesn't like to look like he's dressing to smartly, and he tries to take trains rather than cabs to see clients - not because he's financially obliged to, but because he doesn't want to make the wrong impression on impoverished artists whose work he wants to sell.

All of the crises bubble on as the book ends, just as the financial crisis we're all facing in 2011 hasn't reached a conclusion yet. Big things happen to all the main characters in this book, all of their worlds are shifted by events within the pages of the novel, but Cunningham takes Peter, Rebecca and Mizzy from us before we can see where their crisis-hit lives will lead them.

An eloquent book, and one absolutely drenched in the upheaval of the early 21st century. It's destined for university reading lists of twenty or thirty years' time, and it's very possibly "The Great Gatsby" of this century.

Ten stories about solitariness

Book review: Stuart Evers - Ten Stories about Smoking

The Scottish Booker Prize winner James Kelman once said: "As with writing, smoking can be an enjoyable solitary pursuit."

While the 10 stories in Stuart Evers' first collection are ostensibly all about smokers, the one thing that really links all of the protagonists is their solitariness - solitariness pierced through with a sense of loss, loneliness and all too often heartbreak.

The opening story, "Some Great Project," sees a man going through his parents' things after their death. He comes upon pictures that lead him to discover he has a half-brother who he tracks down and is very quickly rejected by.

While a lot of the stories in this collection revolve around this fundamental sense of desolation, Evers' simple but perfectly weighted writing imbues them with an emotional, fragile strength way more powerful than that found in many short stories.

You could get through most of these stories in the time it would take to smoke a couple of cigarettes, but that is so often a virtue rather than a drawback. Evers uses every word to maximum effect, as any great short story writer (Helen Simpson; Dan Rhodes; Anton Chekhov) does.

From the best man deserting the future groom's bawdy stag do in "The Best Place in Town" to the paranoid woman inventing her husband's affair in "Eclipse", Evers distils whole worlds and fully formed lives within a matter of pages.

As he writes in "Real Work" - "Cities are as big or small as you wish to make them", and even though the cities he creates with his stories often only have one of two people within them, wrapped up within each character is a whole life's and world's worth of poignant emotional punch.

As the collection progresses other themes more associated with smoking - death and disappearance (every cigarette disappears within minutes) - come more to the fore.

But even as Evers shows two men, dying prematurely from a life of smoking, enjoying their final cigarettes, he avoids moralising or sentimentality.

Reading - like perhaps writing or smoking - can be an enjoyable solitary pursuit, but rarely is it as enjoyable as when you have a book of this quality in your hands.

What would happen if...

Originally published on 90minutesonline on 16/06/09

Fernando Torres were forced to play in a Stetson hat?

There were a general election every time a new England manager were required?

Mick McCarthy got lost in a hall of mirrors?

With the end of the football season Britain’s alcohol intake is said to drop by 37%.*

This clear-headedness, combined with the extra free time that absence of football creates, means that fat 30-somethings from Rotherham to Rochdale, Coventry to Colchester and Nottingham to Newcastle…well, probably not Newcastle…are able to come up with all sorts of questions about their beloved game.

Questions that, if answered, could change the face of football as we know it.

Questions that, if embodied in a human form and shepherded through the streets of Premiership footballing cities, would make overpaid men piss their designer knickers and tremble reams of bling off their unskilled fingers.

Here are some more of them.

What would happen if…

Tottenham made Tom Huddlestone do two hours of admin work every day?

Potatoes had to be incorporated into every club’s kit?

There were a half-time bull fight?

Fulham were named Champions at the end of every season, regardless of where they finished in the table?

Rory Delap had Go-Go-Gadget arms?

Ball boys were replaced with huge metal spikes?

It were mandatory for every side to field at least one player born via Caesarean section?

Tena Lady became the official sponsor of the Premiership?

Tim Cahill had a picture of David Moyes tattooed on his left ankle?

The old shirt numbering system were recalled, so that players starting a game had to wear numbers one to 11?

Red cards were replaced with greetings card-style disciplinary cards that referees had to fill out and post to players during the match?

Someone towed away Old Trafford and replaced it with a bouncy castle?

Your own questions, or answers to the ones above, are gladly welcomed below.

*Possible margin of error of up to 37%.

London hotel to provide a taste of Heston Blumenthal

Originally published on ttglive.com on 17 January 2011.

The mad scientist of the kitchen, Heston Blumenthal, will provide London with its biggest restaurant opening of the year when “Dinner by Heston Blumenthal” opens at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park on January 31.

The three Michelin-starred chef found fame with The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, but says his new restaurant will be something totally different.

“I didn’t want to do another Fat Duck and I am never going to do another Fat Duck. The Duck is such a labour of love,” Blumenthal said.

He described Dinner with Heston as a “refined brasserie”, and said that while he had been working on the restaurant for the last two years, the concept behind it started in 2005, shortly after he turned down the chance to open a Fat Duck in Tokyo.
“The menu at Dinner takes inspiration from historic British recipes, from the 14th century to 1940, but does not replicate them – I think people will be surprised and amazed at what we are doing here.
"Britian has got a culinary heritage, but the 50s and 60s killed our reputation for cooking. What has happened in Britain over the past 20 years in terms of cooking – with people being more experimental with what they eat – has been nothing short of miraculous.

Some dishes that will rear their heads on Dinner’s menu include meat fruit - chicken liver parfait that looks like a mandarin – parsley porridge, pigeon with artichokes, bone marrow with anchovy and pickle, and hay smoked mackerel with lemon salad.

Three unusual ketchups will also feature – mushroom, cucumber and cockle – and the introduction of a tasting menu of about five dishes is planned for March, along with afternoon tea – featuring toast sandwiches – from April.

Scallops with cucumber ketchup and peas

Hay smoked mackerel with lemon salad

A set lunch will cost about £25, while a la carte dining will average £50-£55 a head – although the restaurant is fully booked until mid-March.

Asked how he thought restaurants’ relationships with hotels had changed over time, Blumenthal said he thought the stereotype of “dingy, plush restaurants in stuffy, grand hotels” was a thing of the past.

“David Nicholls [Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s director of food and beverage] wants me to reflect my style here, in everything down to the dining room,” Blumenthal said.

“The restaurant is grand in that it has big windows and views over Hyde Park, but it is not stuffy. It hasn’t got a dress code – I don’t understand why any restaurant would have a dress code in this day and age – and there are no tablecloths or carpets. I want it to be noisy.”

The restaurant’s executive chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts – who has worked with Blumenthal at The Fat Duck for the past 11 years – said the restaurant would be “professional, slick but fun – very accessible, hustly bustly, with lots of wood and leather, and with uniforms designed to fit the concept”.

Blumenthal said he had chosen to open a restaurant in London because it was “the most exciting place in the world for eating out – along with New York”.

Looking to the future he predictably said he would have to see if Dinner “goes down ok” before thinking more seriously about opening another restaurant in a hotel.

In terms of the future of food, his answer was slightly less predictable.

“In the next 10 years we’ll see more insects being served in the western world. Lots of people are advocating that we do it to help the food chain, and I don’t see why it couldn’t happen at Dinner. I’d have fried mealworms with a beer.”

Tried & Tested: Exodus iPhone app

Originally published in Travel Trade Gazette on 22 October 2010

To read the article in the digital edition of Travel Trade Gazette, click here.

My Celeb Life in Travel: Matt Allwright

Originally published in Travel Trade Gazette on 29 October 2010 (to view the print version click here and flick to page 68)
The Secret Tourist’s Matt Allwright reveals why there’s nothing quite like Japan, the Lakes, airline meals and home



What's your favourite thing about travelling?
Air travel. I love everything about it and I still find it quite glamorous. I love the terrible meals eaten on the back of somebody else’s seat. It’s tragic, to the point where finally arriving at my destination is a bit of a disappointment.

Because of The Secret Tourist you’re more associated with terrible holidays than fantastic ones. So what’s the worst holiday you’ve ever been on?
My wife got really ill in Portugal and had to go to hospital. We were also there during a train strike and had terrible delays on both flights.

And the best?
You have to go a long way to beat a cottage in the Lake District, so we did – we lived in Japan for three years. On Sadogashima, a small island off the coast of Niigata in Japan – it's awesome. It’s like Cornwall but with sushi and Taiko drummers.

Of the places covered on The Secret Tourist, which one horrified you the most and why?
Do you know, it wasn’t the places that horrified me at all. They all seemed really lovely. What was really disturbing was when, faced with evidence that their resorts were putting guests at risk, the management failed to do anything about it, even when we gave them several weeks’ notice and told them we were coming.

What would you do if you went on holiday somewhere that turned out to be like that?
I would point it out to the management and if it wasn’t possible to fix it, I would demand to be relocated by the tour operator. If that wasn’t possible, I would leave. Life’s too short to catch Legionnaire’s.
What's your favourite destination?
Home. Going away only makes me realise that fact more.
What’s your favourite holiday tipple?
For some reason rose wine from a tumbler never tastes the same when you’re not wearing flip flops.
What sort of things do you like to read on holiday?
Crime fiction. Iain Rankin and George Pelecanos. Stick in an Anthony Beevor history as well, as long as you don’t have to comply with a Ryanair baggage allowance.
Is there anywhere you’ve never been that you’d really love to go?
I wish that I had travelled to Hokkaido in northern Japan while my knees were still good enough to ski there. Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina looks amazing and if you had asked me for a third, stick me on a horse in Montana.