Londoner's Diary: Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal has a quackers rant at vegans

In today's Diary: Heston serves up confusion | Tim Pigott-Smith posthumous book launch tributes | Paul Foot award for homeless investigation | Jamie Foxx turns up at the Serpentine | Theresa speaks last at the EU conference
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21 June 2017

Heston Blumenthal, pictured, is famous for putting snail porridge and meat fruit on the menu at his multi-Michelin-starred restaurants, but his bizarre performance in a debate about the merits of veganism last night left us wondering what’s eating him.

Ostensibly, the event at Spring Restaurant in Somerset House was held to celebrate food brand BOL’s decision to remove all meat and fish from its products, but it turned into a therapy session of sorts for Blumenthal. He started the night by confessing: “I spent my life living in fear about rejection,” before adding, “we don’t need to judge our lives by how much money we have or how big our houses are.”

His fellow panellists, including vegan restaurant owner Camilla Fayed and David Beckham’s yoga instructor Shona Vertue, tried to keep the event on track but were powerless against the unstoppable force of Blumenthal in full flow.

Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens was quoted at length by quixotic chef: “Do you realise we’re travelling at 75,000km an hour right now? Spinning on an axis of 23.5 degrees.”

When one audience member deigned to ask a question to the great man, they were met with the retort: “Ask a computer. A computer could tell you better than any human being.” The audience’s patience was tested with further rambles until Blumenthal flounced off stage. The Londoner called Heston’s spokesperson, who said it was completely normal: he’s “an extremely passionate individual who is famous for his eccentricity and whose ideas have led to him creating some of the most famous restaurants in the world,” she said. Hm.

The proprietor of The Fat Duck certainly knows how to ruffle feathers.

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Theresa May has gone to the back of the queue at the European Council summit. In Donald Tusk’s invitations, May is reduced to after-dinner speaking, after Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and Tusk, who’ll report on presidents Trump and Erdogan. “At the end of the dinner, Prime Minister May will inform us on her intentions as regards the negotiations on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” Tusk writes. She may get her just desserts.

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Homeless scoop wins Paul Foot Award

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Journalists flocked to Bafta in Piccadilly for Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award last night. The prize went to Emma Youle of Archant Investigations, for The Hidden Homeless, which exposed temporary accommodation in Hackney. Editor Ian Hislop praised Youle for “making trouble and making a difference”.

The award is no longer held jointly with The Guardian — it’s Private Eye alone due to “a number of reasons, not just because the Guardian doesn’t have any money,” joked Hislop. “We’ve had two years of negotiations with The Guardian to try to get out of the deal but it’s gone well, and we’re out with no financial contribution on either side.”

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Quote of the day: ‘The Tories need to sort themselves, because when we get into government we will need an effective opposition’

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s plea to the Tories. Cheeky.

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Gimme shelter is the cry at the Serpentine

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Art world luminaries and movie stars were among the guests at a pre-opening drinks reception to celebrate the Serpentine Gallery’s latest summer pavilion. This year the architect responsible is Burkina Faso-born Francis Kéré, the first African to be awarded the commission. His inspiration for the wooden slatted design came from a tree in his native village that provided shade, something attendees could appreciate on a blazing hot night in London. Among the guests were actor Jamie Foxx, in town for the premiere of his film Baby Driver, architect Norman Foster, the Serpentine’s artistic director Hans-Ulrich Obrist and CEO Yana Peel.

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IN 2011, Adele said she was “mortified” at paying the 50 per cent rate of tax. “Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid — are you having a laugh?” But she’s not lacking in generosity. The singer has been at Grenfell Tower, comforting locals, and yesterday delivered cakes to Chelsea fire station. Adele is a resident in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Time for her to turn her anger on what they do with her council tax?

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Pigott-Smith remembered

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Sherlock may come back on our screens after all. At least according to Una Stubbs, who played the landlady Mrs Hudson in the BBC1 series. “I know Benedict [Cumberbatch] wants to, and is very much up for it,” said Stubbs, at the launch party for the posthumous memoirs of actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who died in April. Stubbs, who acted with Pigott-Smith in Pygmalion at the Old Vic, has the advantage of knowing Cumberbatch since he was four. “Maybe a Christmas special of Sherlock — that would be nice.”

Many of Pigott-Smith’s friends came to the party at Bloomsbury HQ in Bedford Square, for the launch of the self-effacing memoirs titled Do You Know Who I Am? Among them were Jeremy Irons, who certainly did: “We were at the Bristol Old Vic school in the late Sixties.” Oliver Chris, cast three years ago in the Almeida’s King Charles III as Prince William to Pigott-Smith’s Charles, pictured above, also paid tribute. “He played my father but he was also a father figure to all of us in the productions,” said Chris.

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Tweet of the day: "Instead of #DayofRage, how about Let’s All Have A Nice Sit Down?”

Journalist Allison Pearson offers a more British alternative to the protests planned today.

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Lie back and think of ... very little

Elizabeth Hurley is showing the way to cool off, in a rubber dinghy in her back garden — one assumes in Herefordshire. All very Wind in the Willows: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half as much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.

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Bold prediction of the day: when Ford cancelled a planned move to Mexico, Donald Trump tweeted “This is just the beginning — much more to follow.” Today Ford announced its new Focus will be built in China.

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