The great thing about New Statesman is how easy it is now to steer clear of the political gossipy crap it uses to pad out its pages. Nicholas Lezard’s column is always my first read (see him in full flow on pub quizzes over there), followed swiftly by Will Self’s restaurant reviews.
Here’s Self:
“I often buy ready-made Caesar salads from supermarkets, because they come with the croutons in a separate little bag and I can then experience the delight of throwing them straight in the bin. What was worse was that these LPQ [Le Pain Quotidien] croutons were extra-large – an ordinary sized crouton is merely a crunchy impediment but a big crouton is a piece of stale fucking bread. If I wanted bread I had plenty to hand – and it was complimentary!”
Or how about:
“The Euroserf growled whether I wanted a large or a small mineral water, and when I asked for specificity she testily conceded that ‘large’ was a litre.
“A litre! What kind of a weirdo goes into a chain restaurant on a Wednesday evening and drinks enough mineral water to leach the amino acids from his brain?”
Great way to avoid hearing about the latest escapades of the Bullingdon bastards.