Late on August 21 the Guardian press office received a request for comment from Ruby Lott-Lavigna, a journalist for Vice.com, for a piece that they were preparing on diversity in British food media. It is a serious issue and worthy of examination. She asserted that we had run no reviews of black-owned restaurants between January 2019 and January 2020.

Hello fabulous listeners to Out To Lunch, or what I like to call THE BEST INTERVIEW PODCAST IN THE UNIVERSE AND I’LL PUNCH ANYONE WHO ARGUES. For those who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, where have you been? Have a precis: I interview brilliant people over brilliant food. Pre-lockdown that was in a restaurant; right now it’s over a video link and a take-away. I’ve talked to a glorious array of guests from Richard E Grant to Dita Von Teese, Kathy Burke to Romesh Ranganathan, Gary Neville to Mel C.

The cover image of my new book, below, is BIG for a reason. It’s designed to fill the whole of your screen, be it mobile, tablet or desktop so you can’t see the text below it, unless you actively scroll down. Why? Because this page has been designed for those who’ve already read My Last Supper: One meal, a lifetime in the making, know what every dish is and now want to get their hands on the ingredients.

Imagine you are about to die.

You have one meal left.

What are you going to have?

Next month Amazon Prime drops a new documentary series about Lorena Bobbit, an American woman who became famous 25 years ago because she was convicted of slicing off her husband’s penis. The series is promising to look in detail at the story. It is certainly worth investigating, because it was always much more complicated than it it was portrayed in the tabloids, where it played out as some dark, brutal comedy about a man having his penis excised. It wasn’t that; it was a story about spousal abuse.

She’s a manicurist. He’s a rising star of porn films. They’re married but live 2,500 miles apart. Which – since they are Lorena and John Wayne Bobbit – suits them just fine…

First published in Night and Day of the Mail on Sunday, March 19, 1995.

Thou shalt not sneer at meat-free cookery

A week day lunchtime and I am standing by my stove again doing something appalling. I have done bad things with food before, of course. I once ate two Pot Noodles for dinner, and didn’t even feel guilty. It was a long time ago, but I did it. I have ordered wings from the very cheapest fried-rat inner city chicken shop and scarfed confectionery that has first been battered and deep fried in a Glasgow chip shop.

I’m delighted and thrilled if not contractually obliged to announce that, on October 4, Guardian Faber will publish Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights, a second collection of 20 of my most negative restaurant reviews.

Each week beneath my restaurant review in the Observer, somebody posts a comment complaining about the cost of the meal reviewed. Perhaps this week it was you. It happens literally every week, and every week some of us make an effort to respond. But I’m very bored of doing so. Hence, I have written this one-size-fits-all response to those crass, ignorant, virtue-signalling self-serving comments about price. For anybody who has ever whinged about the cost of meals in restaurants, this is for you.

The picture above is of a grotesquely exploitative institution; a living hell, where serfs labour daily and are fleeced of their wages. The presiding overlord, Michel Roux Jnr, should be dragged through the doors and burned at the stake in nearby Grosvenor Square before a braying mob. For good measure I should be tied up next to him.

As a biblical prophet I am often asked what to give loved ones for Christmas. Even though I am very much Old Testament and therefore pre-date the whole 'away-in-a-manger-follow-yonder-star' business.

I would like to apologise to anybody who was hoping to see my Ten (Food) Commandments show at Russian Hospitality Week in Moscow, over October 17/18. I have had to cancel my trip for reasons breath-takingly beyond my control.