Overworked and underpaid: staff across the industry all have hellish tales to tell
(Picture: Peter Chirkov/Pexels)Putting to one side his disappointing U-turn of forgiveness, Keith McNally’s Instagram evisceration of James Corden either had a certain unabashed brilliance, or was an example of unalloyed unprofessionalism. Either way, it confirmed what most of us have long suspected: that even the most affable on-screen presence is often a bit of a tit off it. And this sort of thing is important to have established, as there is not yet a TripAdvisor for celebrities, unless you count gossip columns or Popbitch.
Mind you, I’d always thought these sorts of goings-on must have done the rounds since the very first restaurant opened (McDonald’s, Paris, 1765). After the maximum amount of effort a journalist can be expected to make these days — a single, hastily scripted Tweet — it certainly appears so. And while McNally went tonto because Corden was a bit rude about his wife’s egg yolk omelette (which, as per food critic Tim Hayward, does sound concerningly like fried custard), it looks like the New York restaurateur has had it easy.
One former west London landlord remembers a premiership footballer who was known to relieve himself in the corner of the bar, rather than head to the gents (I’ve been at a party with said footballer, and am not surprised). Then there was the Welsh singer who angrily refused the staff’s offer to hang their coat up on the grounds they suspected the team would all want to play dress up with it. Well, perhaps; if only there weren’t a pub to run in the way.
Sometimes it’s sort-of surprising — one place’s regular is an F1 boss, who only ever orders the cheapest thing on the menu (that’s how you keep your money, kids) — and sometimes it’s not. James Chiavarini of Kensington’s Il Portico remembers his father grabbing Michael Winner, film director, restaurant critic and “cantankerous old git, nasty old bully, high-chair toddler tyrant” (Chiavarini’s words) “by the collar, and Dad said: ‘you’re a dirty man with dirty money and I don’t want your dirty money in my nice restaurant, so F*** OFF!”
What had Winner, who was in most lunchtimes, done? Turns out, he’d had a go at Chiavarini Sr’s wife, insulting her voraciously for accidentally putting salt (instead of sugar) on his strawberries. She’d done it after a particularly exhausting round of chemo; Winner had been showing off to his guest, Roger Moore. “Funnily enough, a couple of weeks later, he wrote us the loveliest review in Winner’s Dinners. And then he became really, really nice,” remembers Chiavarini.
Too late. On his wedding day many years before, his father had vowed never to let anyone ever insult his beloved and so, “in 55 years, the only person who’s ever been barred from Il Portico is Michael Winner.” Love stories come in all shapes in sizes.
But if the famous are sometimes badly behaved, from every DM I had, it seems the public are the real criminal sorts. There are tales of soiled underwear stuffed in hallway drawers, Covid mentalists, and multiple empty pint glasses getting filled up with vomit. Distressingly, most of these sick stories seem to end with some variant of “and then they went back to the bar for another!” — so either there’s one very committed albeit nauseous drinker doing the rounds, or quite a lot of people pull this heinous stunt.
Other tales are more bemusing. One customer insisted on moving hotels at half five in the morning owing to the place being haunted — only, they’d been there a week, and hadn’t noticed a thing so far. And it happened they were checking out at 11am anyway.
People, then, are strange. Strange, but also grim. Deeney’s, the east London toastie makers, recalled someone who “changed a nappy at the table then left it on their plate for us to clear.” It’s not like the place is short on loos or a baby-change. If our style guide allowed the vomit emoji, here’s where I’d put it.
And that’s the stuff we can hear about. One long-standing sommelier (who in his own words has “served two Prime Ministers, minor royals and major celebrities — a Beatle, Jay-Z, Barry Scott off the Cillit Bang ads”) wrote me a numbered list of confounding public interactions (“customers complained butter was cold; didn’t want it replaced” etcetera) but says most of the celebrity anecdotes are kept under legal lock and key. I should point out here that this man is followed by Barack Obama, but apparently it’s the mould-spray Barry who made more of an impression.
Regardless of which Bazza takes his fancy, he says of most of his interaction “confidentiality agreements were signed after what I can only call” — well, we can’t print what it’s called. But it’s The something-something Incident, where something-something is the name of a Noughties girl band singer. The details are... well, salacious is the proper way of putting it. Have fun guessing. And for Christ’s sake, behave next time you’re out. That means you too, Corden.
