Millionaires complain about the cost of living? You can only laugh about it: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV
The hidden world of hospitality
Code Blue: The murder of June Fox-Roberts
New York has Spiderman. Gotham has Batman. But who will save Manchester?
Have no fear, SuperTom is here, with his sidekick, Gary the Boy Wonder!
Restaurateur Tom Kerridge claimed, with breath-taking chutzpah on The Hidden World Of Hospitality (BBC2), that the capital of northern England was barely on the foodie map until he arrived.
“Manchester was in this little bubble for a number of years and not much happened,” he said, “and then suddenly, five years ago, these beautiful green shoots of great food started.”
Not much going on? That will come as a surprise to the bustling restaurants, bars and nightclubs that have earned the city its reputation as Europe’s most vibrant party scene.
Restaurateur Tom Kerridge claimed, with breath-taking chutzpah on The Hidden World Of Hospitality (BBC2), that Northern England’s capital was barely on the foodie map until he arrived
Tom Kerridge in the kitchen with The Beefy Boys on an episode of The Hidden World of Hospitality
What did Tom think happened that made Manchester come to life? Well, in 2019 he launched his eatery The Bull And Bear, in the Stock Exchange Hotel – co-owned by former England footballer and Labor cheerleader Gary Neville.
Tom and Gary did such a spectacular job reviving the restaurant scene that, by the time the Beeb’s cameras caught up with them, The Bull And Bear was closing. This, Tom proudly announced, meant his staff would be free to ‘seize other opportunities’, which sounds much better than being out of work.
Since the recording of this episode at the end of 2022, the Beurs has opened another restaurant. It also closed last month.
It’s inconceivable that this has anything to do with Gary’s shortcomings as a hotelier, as everyone knows that running a business is easy compared to kicking a ball – and the former Manchester United right-back was so good at kicking a ball that he will undoubtedly excel at everything else.
He explained to Tom why the restaurant couldn’t go ahead: ‘I mean, the cost of living, the cost of energy, the impact of Brexit over the past few years. . . it’s real, it’s huge.’
The spectacle of a millionaire socialist sitting on a bar stool in a five-star hotel blaming the cost of living for his problems was deliriously funny.
SuperTom’s attitude made me laugh less. “I’ve opened and closed restaurants and businesses before,” he said with an audible shrug. “This isn’t the first time, you know, in a 30-year career.”
Well, as long as it doesn’t wake Tom up, that’s the main thing. This glimpse into his hidden world has shown us something he may not have intended to reveal: everything and everyone revolves around him.
How police forensic investigators can go to work and not lose sleep over is hard to fathom, after some scenes in the murder documentary Code Blue: The Killing Of June Fox-Roberts (ITV1). Great-grandmother June was found dead in her home in Glamorgan in 2021. Her torso was wrapped in plastic and her head and limbs were missing.
The murder documentary Code Blue: The Killing Of June Fox-Roberts (ITV1) covers the case of great-grandmother June, who was found dead in her home in Glamorgan in 2021.
This has been a bloody week for viewers, with the first two episodes of BBC1’s blood-soaked horror thriller Wolf. But the carnage is more disturbing when it’s real, even though the worst police bodycam footage has faded.
The prime suspect was spotted in the yard of a nearby transporter. The police immediately gave him the nickname Containerman. That may seem callous, when he could have been “Interested A” or simply “someone we should remove from our investigations.”
But faced with such gruesome images, one’s instinct might be to focus on one mundane detail, for the sake of common sense.
Containerman was soon discovered sitting in an alley. He ate from a bag of Haribo candies. You don’t get more everyday than that.