http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/06/nick-clegg-coalition-local-elections
While Labour ministers were eating prawn cocktails with financiers,
Prawn cocktails? Really? In 2003? Were financiers having 1970s theme nights to the strains of David Essex, finishing up with a choice between crepes suzette and black forest gateaux? Who knew? Should I buy a coffee percolator for the next time I have company around? Should I stock up on Liebfraumilch? Can you still buy salad cream?
That's why Clegg's so false. He can't even try to insult people for their decadence without sounding like he's disconnected from reality. I can't believe that Nick Clegg (b.1967, "third of four children of Nicholas P. Clegg CBE, the chairman of United Trust Bank") has eaten a prawn cocktail in his life, because I doubt his parents considered, even ironically, taking him as a child to a Berni Inn. It sounds like he has no idea what the common people think the rich people eat, and is struggling to find a dish that sounds debauched without being obscure.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the sine qua non of fine dining in the noughties was cheap frozen prawns in Marie Rose sauce over shredded Iceberg lettuce. I wasn't eating out as much as I did (hey! I went to Granita before it was notorious! I went to Marco Pierre White's first restaurant in Wandsworth!) and perhaps I missed a whole cycle of fashion.
Or alternatively, Nick Clegg's just a patronising fool. Tough choice.
ian