Giles Coren loses it big time

The Times weekend restaurant reviewer, Giles Coren, has written a blistering e-mail to the paper's sub-editors. He accuses them of messing up one of his masterpieces. The e-mail has leaked out; you can read it here.

My first reaction to the e-mail is that if this is typical of Coren's first drafts, it's no surprise that the Times insists on running his submissions past sub-editors. Leaving aside the multiple obscenities, it's verbose (as even Giles admits at the end) and full of mis-spellings and grammatical errors. It's usually a good idea to count to ten after you write something in anger, but evidently Giles was too self-righteously mad to think of that.

And what is the substance of his complaint? Well, the sub omitted one word from the final sentence of the review. One letter, actually: the indefinite article. This got Giles incandescent with rage for two reasons. First, he claims that it means the piece ends on an unstressed syllable, something he would never do. I've read the sentence several times, and he's wrong about that: the word "nosh" is still stressed. Second, he says that it destroys his meaning: he had structured the whole review so as to get in a final joke playing on a double meaning for the Yiddish word "nosh". Apparently this word refers to eating not only in the conventional sense, but also in the sexual sense: blowjobs, hummers, what you will.

I don't know about you, but I don't read restaurant reviews, by Giles Coren or anyone else, looking for things like that. If the sub had left the indefinite article in place, I daresay the number of people who got this great joke would have been limited to the number of people who Giles personally told to look out for it. This is the Times, after all, not Viz. (Without questioning Giles's knowledge of Yiddish -- he seems very touchy about that -- I might point out that the late Lenny Bruce used "fress" rather than "nosh" for the sexual act. Lenny was at least as Jewish as Giles, and a whole lot funnier).

So where does this leave Giles, assuming he doesn't carry out on his implicit threat to walk away from the job? Well, as a restaurant reviewer who uses the column to expound on any subject that comes to mind, he's not a patch on A A Gill; as an egomaniac, he's not in Michael Winner's league; and as a writer, he's a shadow of his late father.

Viva Max! (now crawl back into your hole)

Max Mosley is not someone who'd be at the top of my list of dinner party guests. After all, he's the head of the most boring form (Formula 1) of the world's most tedious sport (motor racing). Beside that, he may also be a bit of a sexual deviant, if the evidence presented in his just-concluded libel action is to be believed. Even so, I'm very glad that he won the case. The "right" of sleazemongers like the News of the World to make money by catching major or minor celebrities doing something icky (or worse, entrapping them into doing so) is not the kind of freedom I'd go to the wall for.

The NoTW editor's defence of his lurid rag in the wake of the verdict oozes hypocrisy. In his opinion, as the head of the richest sport in the world, with almost 125 million members, Mr Mosley "had an obligation to honour the standards which its vast membership had every right to expect of him. Taking part in depraved and brutal S&M orgies on a regular basis does not, in our opinion, constitute the fit and proper behaviour to be expected of someone in his hugely influential position."

Judge not lest ye be judged yourself, Mr Editor. Who cares what you think is fit and proper? And on what basis do you assess the standards to which the 125 million "members" of the FIA (most of whom may not even know that they're regarded as such) expect Max Mosley to conform? Most of them would probably agree that private means private, except in cases where an individual's private behaviour adversely affects his or her ability to perform a public role. If the Pope took part in an S & M orgy, that would be a story with true public interest; if some old guy with an unhealthy interest in fast cars does so, it isn't.

I said at the beginning that I wouldn't invite Mosley to a dinner party. You often see people publishing lists of their ideal dinner party guests (Jesus Christ, Shakespeare and Beethoven seem to be favourites), but it's actually more interesting and much more fun to compile a guest list for the dinner party from hell. My list (which changes regularly) would include Ricky Gervais, Jeremy Clarkson, Ann Robinson, Alan Greenspan, Alan Sugar, Cherie Blair, Salman Rushdie and either of the Gallagher brothers. Food provided by Anthony Worrall Thompson, wines by Gallo, musical entertainment by James Blunt. There's one empty seat -- anybody want it?

Large but not high

The Office for Fair Trading (OFT) has taken another potshot at the UK's banks today, saying that their current account fees are not serving customers well. Here's a sample of the coverage.

As a former banker, I'm well used to hearing complaints about how much money banks make, or how they make it. It's not clear to me how whether there's any form of bank profit-making that many members of the public or the media (or even some of the regulators) would find acceptable. By and large, banks make money either from fees (such as current account charges) or from the so-called "spread" between their funding costs and their lending rates. Both of these regularly come under malevolent and ill-informed scrutiny.

In the case of the present debate on current account fees, I should 'fess up and say that I have one of those premium-type accounts that allows me to pay no fees as long as I keep a certain balance in my account. It does seem unfair on the surface that people with less money than me are paying larger fees, but the reason the bank gives me this deal is that it makes plenty of money by holding on to my cash and lending it on at a spread. I may not be paying the fees that the OFT is so upset about, but I have no doubt that my bank is making more money out of me than it does out of its worse-off cliemts. You'd think the OFT might think about this before it issues its fatwa.

A subset of this supposed case against fees, one raised yet again by the OFT today, is the perceived unfairness of high charges for unauthorised overdrafts. I have no sympathy at all with this, given how easy it is to get a pre-authorised overdraft limit -- and it's also free. If you don't do this, it's hardly your bank's fault. Sure, these charges may be a tax on stupidity, but so is the National Lottery, and I haven't heard the OFT slagging that off recently.

As for the "spread", the money advice columns in the newspapers are constantly carping about the gap between deposit rates and mortgage rates. The truth is, however, that much of the banks' funding takes place it the wholesale markets, at much higher rates than those posted in your High Street branch. It's these rates that largely determine how much gets charged for loans, especially in periods like the one we've just gone through, where growth in mortgage lending far exceeded the deposit-gathering capabilities of the banks' branch networks. The latest data I saw on this suggested that the spread between wholesale deposits and mortgage rates is well below 100 basis points. Bizarrely, the newspaper that reported this called it a "handsome return": it's nothing of the sort, especially in a world of rising credit risks and defaults.

The media love to report the aggregate earnings of the banks because the numbers are impressively (or if you're so inclined, infuriatingly) huge. Today's OFT report talks of £8 billion in fee revenue for the entire banking system, with £2.6 billion coming from overdraft charges. The former President of the bank I used to work for in Canada responded to a similar round of criticism by arguing that these numbers are "large, but not high". Banking is by nature a high volume, low margin business. It would be nice to think that the OFT (and its cheerleaders in the media) knew that.

One final thought: if you don't like profitable banks, how do you feel about unprofitable ones? Did you enjoy the Northern Rock crisis? Its clients are having trouble remortgaging not because the bank was too profitable, but because it wasn't profitable enough to survive in tough times.

Rosie's road to Damascus

For the last few years, Rosie Millard has been regaling readers of the Times with boastful tales of her indulgent lifestyle. She's bragged of taking on massive leverage to become a buy-to-let landlord, and revealed that even with two high income earners in the household, she still had to max out her credit cards in order to maintain the standards she aspired to.

But in common with the rest of the Times hacks, she's now trying to change her message, in line with the increasingly dire economic outlook. A few months ago her buy-to-let column gave way to something called "Lust, greed and envy", though as it turns out this has mostly been about buy-to-let. And in today's Sunday Times, she does an admiring report on a self-admitted "z-list celebrity", Geraint Anderson.

Under the nom de guerre "Cityboy" Anderson, an ex-investment banker, had a regular column in one of the free London papers, blowing the whistle on the excesses of his colleagues and competitors. Now he's quit the biz and written a novel on the same topic, imaginatively called "Cityboy" (and equally imaginatively subtitled "Beer and loathing in the Square Mile" -- how many times does that make it that Hunter S.Thompson has been ripped off?)

Rosie writes admiringly of how Anderson gave part of his last £500k bonus away and talks of his plans to start a commune in Pembrokeshire. Her final verdict: "Go for it, Cityboy". And while you're at it, Geraint, take Rosie to Pembrokeshire with you.

Next week in the Times: Richard Dawkins bigs up the Pope.

What are they so worried about?

Israel and the United States have strongly condemned Iran's missile tests this week, even though it now seems as if the apparent success of the firings is thanks to some nifty work with Photoshop rather than actual ballistics expertise. Quite right, say I; why on earth does Iran think it need this kind of kit?

It's not as if Israel has its own intermediate range rockets, or any nuclear warheads.

It's not as if Israel has ever launched a pre-emptive strike against possible nuclear development work in a neighbouring country.

It's not as if Israel has been running widely-publicised wargames designed to show the strike capabilities of its forces.

It's not as if the US has been implacably hostile to Iran ever since the fall of the Shah.

It's not as if the US has ever lied about events in a country it was fixing to attack.

It's not as if the US has battle-hardened and hugely equipped forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and very possibly Pakistan too, as well as a battle-ready fleet in the Gulf and Indian Ocean.

And it's not as if the CIA is already active within Iran.

So lighten up, Ahmedinejad! You may be a genocidal maniac, but there's no reason for you to be paranoid.

John Lewis listing

John Lewis, usually Britain's Most Admired Store, has just announced a year-on-year sales decline of more than 8% in the latest reporting week, with three stores seeing sales plunge by more than 20%. The media are attributing this to belt-tightening on the part of the middle classes, though sales at JL's food subsidiary, Waitrose, actually rose 3% in the same week. Waitrose is definitely at the top end of the price range among food sellers, and there had been lots of reports that customers were flocking to Aldi and Lidl to stock up on basics.

If the Waitrose numbers continue to hold up, it looks like it will the the grocers in the middle price bracket that get squeezed. I don't find this completely illogical -- it's a lot easier to decide to go without a plasma television for the bedroom than to trade down from line-caught monkfish fillets to tinned weiners. Well, it's easier for me, anyway.

Besides, there may be another explanation for the John Lewis results. MPs have been waiting to find out whether their extravagant expense allowances for second homes, the so-called John Lewis list, might be axed. No worries, though -- the expense allowances were reaffirmed last night in a vote by, well, by the MPs themselves, actually. Really surprising outcome, that. Now they'll all head back to JL, and the results will turn around quick sharp.

Criticisms of the John Lewis list have focussed on the seemingly excessive amounts MPs are allowed to spend on everyday items. For example, they can spend £750 on a television, which gets you a pretty decent piece of kit these days. But never mind the cost: if they're as busy as they claim to be and are constantly running back and forth between Westminster and their constituencies, when do they have time to watch the box at all??

I'd like to solve the MPs' second home problem a different way. Let's put them up during the week in a nice H-block type building, preferably a tube ride away from the House of Commons. Twenty to a room. They seem to think that's good enough for the squaddies preparing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I think it should be good enough for them.

The worst invention ever just got worse

Has there ever been a more useless invention than the hot-air hand dryer? Years ago in a washroom in Canada, I remember seeing an interesting and entirely appropriate graffiti addition to the operating instructions. These now read: 1. Push button. 2. Rub hands under hot air. 3. Give up. 4. Dry hands on pants.

They haven't improved much since then. However, the hand dryers at Heathrow Terminal 5 seem to represent a new generation of torment. In contrast to the feeble whisper of a lot of these devices, the ones at T5 emit a fantastic blast of hot air. It's as if they've found a new use for the engines out of the mothballed Concorde fleet.

So what's not to like? Well, the water droplets are blown off your hands onto an angled metal panel just below -- and from there, directly onto your crotch. So if you don't want to risk missing your flight because you're too embarrassed to leave the loo, don't wear beige slacks when using T5!