Heston's toast with egg...on his face

We're returning to a favourite subject because I think that world-class asininity deserves to be acknowledged whenever it is witnessed. Yes, we're going to Little Chef, the company which has had its heart ripped out and stuffed with some over-priced and out-of-reach organic something or other, and then blasted with a blow torch by moonlight on a slab of Portland Stone by Heston and his friends at RCapital.

After six wrong-headed years they've seen the infra-red heating light and shown Heston the emergency exit, because they've finally realised that their customers don't care for his concoctions and they want the kind of food they associate with Little Chef, you know, the stuff its name was built on. At times like this it's hard not to slip into Littlejohn-speak. In fact it can't be avoided. You couldn't make it up!

What happened here was that the vanity and ambition of a chef was fed by a television company, who then blinded the owners with the stardust they sprinkled on them, thus rendering them blind to, as Basil Fawlty so eloquently put it, 'the bleeding obvious'. And it's been fun to watch, but not funny at all if you happen to be one of the people who were made redundant whilst they continued with their redundant repositioning exercise.

The person who has benefited most from this farce is the titular chef, who accrued a lucrative deal with Waitrose (amongst others) on the back of the publicity generated by the Channel 4 programme. The people who have most definitely not benefited are the staff and the customers. Call me quaint, but I don't think it's supposed to be that way around.

Did RCaptial and their consultants do any research at all? And if they did they must have binned it, because even a fleeting chat with their customers would have told them that they were flogging the wrong chef.

This piece in last Sunday's Mail on Sunday was perhaps the best of the bunch and contains some choice quotes from staff and customers alike and the relief that he's now off-menu literally (as of this Monday) and figuratively is tangible. If you missed it it's worth a read so you can quote from it the next time one of your clients acts like they've been on the magic mushrooms.

I can't cook at all, Heston. Even putting something in the oven to warm up carries the possibility of a trip to A&E, but I can make a decent bit of toast. Lovely stuff.

The stuff they want.


For you, Heston...

The perfect contrast

Wonderful Charlie Chaplin performer on the Southbank, London, today.

 

 

He says nothing but conveys everything and I say too much, by which I mean that I say what others won't. I'm famous for it. It's both a virtue and an inhibitor. I don't set out to be contrary or difficult, it's just my nature. I can't and won't say that black is white when it so obviously isn't. I just can't. Beware the monoculture. You know, when someone, somewhere says, "you're just what we need but you won't fit in" because what they mean is you won't tow the line. So don't take that to heart. Don't think that it's you, because it is most definitely them. Ask yourself, do you really want to work for someone who needs to have that degree of control over you? I don't. If only I had a penny for every occasion that someone had said that to me.

 

If you have any sense, you recruit people for what they can add, not what they can replicate. So beware. That should be your barometer...always.

 

I am what I am.

I can't be anything or anyone else. What I am is why I can do what I can do. That applies to you too.

 

Won't. Can't. Shan't.

Red, White but never Blue

The noise was terrific and so was the sight of planes old and new flying at very low levels over Covent Garden this afternoon. They were part of a fly-past to mark Trooping the Colour, but most of the people who came to a halt, smartphones and iPads aloft, didn't know that. For a while King Street was a contemporary Pompeii. No one moved. Heads turned upwards. Children silent. All watching the planes. The only noise being the oooh's and ahh's in exclamation of the sheer size of some of the craft and their proximity to them. I was going to Tesco, but I stopped and turned, because I new that 'they' must surely be on their way. Sure enough, an almighty roar and then the hallmark red, white and blue smoke of the Red Arrows. Everyone. But everyone, clapped, cheered and shouted. Big Issue sellers punched the air. Big Lads came out of the Round House pub and cheered. And it seems that this very iconic symbol of Britishness has fans way beyond these shores. It was great to see and experience. And then I met this fine chap and his lady wife leaving Skylon, they having been to the ceremony itself. Don't they look great! No need to dream about winning the lottery, because we already did. We're British.

The Big Bear is on Little Portland Street

On the brand strength and recognition scale Soviet Russia is right up there; one of the biggest and most successful brand communications exercises ever. A powerful and indelible pallet of colours, symbols, shapes, illustrations, type and Cyrillic script. A borscht of elements which can be served to transmit a very definite set of values and emotions.

I'm a huge fan of Russian print and poster works and I was very glasnost (sorry, couldn't resist that) to find, GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design, yesterday. It opened last week and it has some truly smashing work on display. If you work in communications you really need to visit this constructivist haven.

I want...

I want...

I want!

Never meet your heroes...

that's what they say. And you know what? I think they're right, because had I seen the Flowerpot Men and their mate Andy Pandy up close back then, the words 'Andy Pandy's coming to play' would have provoked a very different set of feelings, not to mention nightmares, pretty much like the one I had last night.

Today no one would put these monsters on the box. Not even after a couple of bottles of Baileys. Clearly the technological limitations of the average Ferguson set imbued them with a softness they most certainly do not have in the flesh. More Dead of Night than afternoon delight.

And to think that some protested that the colourful, rotund and benign Teletubbies were evil! Angels indeed in comparison. And if you don't believe me, go to The Museum of London and see them for yourself. You can sit on one of their comfy 50s sofas and watch episodes of the same on an antiquated set and take a stroll down memory lane as you survey the ducks on the wall.

You might think that kids today, having been brought up in the digital age and fed on a diet of CGI, would think they'd wandered into a stone-age cave. But no, they're mesmerised by it. I think it's the tone and pace of it, it's so different to 'their' entertainment landscape. But then, via the internet and sites such as YouTube, they are introduced to all manner of things, so perhaps it's not so alien to them after all.

 



I bet it seemed like a good idea down the pub...

 

Bloomsbury, London

The sun was particularly intense this afternoon, so I had wondered if the above was some kind of bad mirage. But no.

This company thought it was a good idea to name itself after a notorious herbicide, which is inextricably linked with a terrible conflict and infamous for causing health defects and has latterly been linked to the deadliest form of prostate cancer. Ummmm.

Rating on the fu*kwit scale of 1 to 10?
You decide.

Let's not forget...

But a surprising number of people do.