Food, Glorious Food

This week I enjoyed the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten, and I also know it’s the most expensive meal I will EVER eat in my life. Unless you count my wedding meal of course– I’ve been paying for that ever since.

Two very nice folk from Kilmarnock named Drew and Marie paid twenty thousand pounds to a kids’ charity to win Gordon Ramsay’s chef table at The Savoy Hotel for the evening, and they were kind enough to invite me along to the meal. Eight of us sat down to an eight course dinner in a small private room with one glass wall looking out on the kitchen. I’ve only just realised that is we could see them, they could see us. Oops. My weird faces pressed against the glass with my tongue hanging out were probably a bad idea.

For each of the eight courses, a different chef would come in to our little room and explain what he had made, followed by the sommelier who took us through the eight wines he had chosen, and as someone who only gets close to money by eating millionaire’s shortbread, I suddenly felt I knew how Simon Cowell lives. Without the Botox and smarm, obviously.

Our party of eight was made up of Drew and Marie, myself and five others consisting of the great and good - from MPs to a Baroness, from leading lights of entertainment through to heads of household name businesses, and we ended up laughing louder and longer than I can remember doing for a long time. We even sang rude songs when one of us (not me) suggested doing “the knob song”. This apparently involves going round the table substituting the word “knob” for “love”. So we had to sing The Beatles’ hits She Knobs You Yeah Yeah Yeah, Knob Knob Me Do, All You Need is Knob....... you get the idea. Childish, but fun.

One of the party told us she’s going to play Susan Boyle in a musical of her life next year and she passed on hilarious stories of the Britain’s Got Talent singer who panics her chauffeur by taking the bus instead. Susan is so modest she couldn’t understand why she had to make her first album. She knew she had lost the competition therefore she thought the dream was all over. Now, of course, she’s arguably one of the world’s wealthiest stars and the musical will be going to Australia, Japan, China and America.

I’m not sure Susan would have enjoyed the Savoy as it may have made her inhibited about asking for pie, chips and Irn Bru, but she would have liked the bit where we were all taken in to the kitchen to meet the chefs, given aprons, and asked to cook our own steak. It was hot in there and the chefs were much friendlier than the one I worked with when I was at University making some money at weekends as a waiter. Whenever anyone sent back their food because it was too cold or the steak wasn’t well done enough, he would throw it on the floor, stand on it, baste it in the bin and then grill it a bit more and send it back out.

The Savoy has been closed for years for a face lift and it looks magnificent, and the final course of melting chocolate sponge was as heavenly as you’d expect from a twenty thousand pound meal in a multi million pound hotel that’s famous the world over.

So, I know what you’re asking. Why, if all the guests were famous in politics, business or showbiz, was I invited? I hung around at the end expecting to be given a pair of rubber gloves and a sink to wash up the pots but I wasn’t called in to action. I can only guess they needed cover in case one of the waiters went sick.

Forget whoever else was at that meal. Drew and Marie were the stars. To generously give all that money to help kids in difficulty was a wonderful gesture, and they gave this big kid the evening of his life. Thank you.

The Boss

Apologies for not updating the blog for a few weeks. I have been working abroad and found I had very little time between working, eating banquets, pampering myself in spas, hunting down chocolate, sun bathing and beach inspections. My life is tougher than you think.

Just as I flew off Oswald Grubel, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS, resigned after someone he’d never met, at a building he’s probably never entered, in an office he’s not set foot in, lost his bank a wee bit of money in a deal that made a Nigerian email scam seem attractive.

Over two billion dollars was lost – don’t start looking under hedges (or hedge funds for that matter) because you won’t find it. The money has disappeared in to electronic, push button, trading land, one minute there the next a red, trouser soiling, mark on a computer screen.

The reason I bring this to your attention is that I have met Mr Grubel, in fact I worked with him a few times coaching him for speeches, and I can tell you that he looks normal. No Superman cape or Batmobile car. No ability to weave webs between buildings or turn green when he’s angry. He’s just a big, normal, bloke. So why do we expect everyday people to have all the answers and look after financial empires that straddle the globe, spending more in a day than some countries in a year?

The answer is that we don’t, or at least shouldn’t. These giants of commerce should always surround themselves with teams of good people who will be constantly warning, evaluating, anticipating, judging and offering advice.

To watch Ozzie Grubel and other similarly placed global financial superstars in action, as I have frequently, is to marvel at how they have space in their head for all the nonsense that assaults them from all quarters, daily. They enter a room and everyone wants their ear, each person wishes to push their agenda or lobby for their favourites, and somewhere in there could be a quick “by the way I think someone’s got his hand in the till and we might have a bit of a problem”.

How on earth their heads don’t explode with the responsibility is beyond me. You can surround yourself with the best of aides and help, but ultimately the buck stops with the chief.

Carol Bartz, boss of Yahoo, was sacked a few weeks ago after a brief spell in charge of the household name company and instead of saying she was leaving “to spend more time with her family” or wanted “to pursue other projects” she told a reporter that Yahoo was filled with “dooffuses who f**ked me over”. There’s nothing quite like falling on your sword while slagging off your enemy just as you get disembowelled. It should happen more often.

Here in the UK, top of the tree public and private sector jobs are disappearing quicker than snow off a barbecue and you’ll find many former chief executives selling The Big Issue from the trunk of their Bentleys and Aston Martins.

The point I’m making is that if the current economic horrors have affected your job, take comfort from the fact that you are not alone. It doesn’t matter whether you work as a chief executive or a shop assistant right now, job security is a thing of the distant past. We should all just decide to go freelance and look after ourselves. The upside is that it pays better, the downside is that you don’t work everyday and there’s no pension at the end unless you save money yourself.

But at least you are your own boss and no one can lose you your job. Except you.