Do you know the muffin man...

...who lives on Drury Lane? Cause if you do, you might want to tell him that having four security guards escort my two Lawyer friends off the Tamarai premises is not best way to get them to pay the discretionary 12.5% service charge he added to the bill! Here comes Lesson 4 - Tamarai sucks!

Confused, trust me so was I when I heard the story and to be honest I still am... here’s a breakdown of the events.

1. A friend of mine goes to a chic Asian fusion restaurant called Tamarai (on Drury) with another of her friends
2. The bill (no more than £180) arrives and due to crappy service they decide not to pay the full 12.5% discretionary service charge - they want to pay less
3. The PIlsbury Dough boy in the cheap suit then says that they must pay and if they don’t then he won't accept payment for the meal
4. He then says “If you can't afford to eat in places like this, you shouldn't come out - this is fine dining, not Mcdonalds"
5. After much wrangling he calls for four security guards to escort the two off the premises
6. She has now received a claim for £1,000 because apparently my friend “abused other diners, intimidated staff and vandalised property”

Right so when I finally heard the whole story I thought it would be best for me to write a list of rules for the muffin man management of Tamarai, I’m calling it ‘Restauranting 101’.

Rule #1 - A Discretionary Service charge is just that

Since when did discretionary’s definition in the dictionary change to compulsory and a discretionary payment compulsory to the point of it’s absence causing an entire bill to be forfeit. I’m pretty sure that the definition of 'Discretionary' is having the ability to decide or act using your judgement - SO A DISCRETIONARY SERVICE CHARGE DOESN”T HAVE TO BE PAID IT IS AT THE PATRONS DISCRETION!!!!

Rule #2 - Not accepting payment is kind of stupid

As a restaurant, surely it’s better for you to be paid for the food rather than allowing your muffin man staff to refuse payment because they are not going to receive 12.5%. Would you not prefer to take full payment and allow the discretionary charge to be paid - oh no not if your Tamrai, you simply treat your restaurant like it's William Hill and hope for the best.

Rule #3 - Four security guards + two girls = overkill

Even if you want to remove a couple of ladies from your premises, using four burly security guards is kind of going too far - neither of my friends aren’t in the WWF, they are normal, mild mannered legal professionals and don’t really need Grant and Phil Mitchell clones to get them to leave.  Telling them it’s not Mcdonalds and that it is a fine dining establishment does the trick!

Rule #4 - £180 does not equal £1,000

Now I know that being in the restaurant business means that food is your speciality, not numbers but a basic grasp of mathematics would probably serve you well. Not allowing two diners to pay a £180 does not give you cause to try and claim £1,000 at a later date (honestly a lobotomised goat with an 'F' in GCSE Food Technology could tell you that. Now you've got to prove that they broke the law (which they didn’t) and then spend more than £1,000 going through small claims (and probably lose).

Rule #5 - Don’t employ offensive staff

The whole reason I’m writing this post is because of the offensive nature the entire event played out. I know I don’t know all the details, but I do know that my friends were told that they basically should go to Mcdonalds because they weren’t good enough to dine in Tamarai due to questioning the service. Well if you hadn’t employed freakin’ idiots maybe they’d get their service charge and everyone would be happy.

Lesson learned -Tamarai sucks

But I guess I’m less confused now than I was at the start of this blog... the one clear thought crawling through the thicket of ‘What the heck’ is simply don’t go and eat at Tamarai - you’ll get shoddy service, be expected to pay for it, get insulted, be ejected by the Mitchell Brothers plus clones and then get a £1,000 bill a week later! Don't go and tell all your friends not to as well - the muffin man might make great cakes, but he makes shitty restaurants!

Parents, your children are calling you!

I’ve just realised that my life is about to move to a new age category. A few months ago I registered with a new Doctor’s surgery and had to fill out some personal information and I was still in the 21-29 bracket, but as I type I'm mere months from my 30th birthday I am about to having to tick the 30-39 check box. I don’t know why I’m surprised, the signs are everywhere; for the past couple of years the people in my life have been getting married, buying houses and having more and more children (seriously, they're popping them out everywhere). And I guess it's this progression from youthful checkbox to maturity laden checkbox is the reason I find myself writing on this particular subject matter - parents - or the lack there of.

Reading ‘The Week’ as I do every week, I came across a story focussing on whether young children were unduly sexualised in the media and how that makes them interact with one another. Boys treating girls as sexual objects, young women seeing sex as a legitimate way of realising their dreams. After reading the whole piece all I could ask was WHERE WERE THE FREAKING PARENTS? And not just where were the parents, but where were they when they could still make a difference? As parents surely it's our job to be the most positive influence in our children's life . To shape their World view because the last time I checked it wasn't the media's job to raise children - it was their job to sell units! But that doesn’t mean if parents don’t take charge of what they're consuming the media won’t.

So instead of pressurising the government into serving up a ‘Mc-Happy Meal’ of censored entertainment to ensure the future of our children, why don’t we take back control? You don't like the fact your children can see Lady Ga Ga flashing her crotch in her latest video looking like an extra from Prisoner Cell Block H you can do something about it - turn of the TV. Wondering why a 9 year old is talking about being too fat or the fact there is an alarming rate of eating disorders in children under 10? It might have something to with the same child sits in front of 'What Katie did Next' every week ingesting the utter nonsense emanating from everything Jordan does and the messages her ridiculous lifestyle endorses. Wondering where your son is getting his questionable views of women from? Maybe refuse to buy him latest copy of Nuts magazine and replace it with something a little less breast heavy.

It’s not rocket science, if we want to stop the ‘pornification’ of our children and change the patterns of behaviour, it’s up to us, otherwise we’re just shifting the raising of our children from the media to the government and not where it should lie... with us.

The Third Lesson - Celebrities can be kind of stupid

Ok, so I'm back on my soapbox - it's getting really comfortable up here. Once the sunny days of Summer come along I'm thinking about pimping it out. You know, a deck chair, a jug of Pimms, iPod and some stunners just chilling. Because in all honesty so many things are going on at the moment that my mind cannot comprehend. My mother once told me that common sense is not common and for years I treated it with the same disdain as most of her other old mother's tales. Tales of  square eyes and face freezing gusts of wind, but you know what, she was right!

Carol Vorderman should communicate in binary code...

Spending Thursday night doing what I do every Thursday night, I found myself in front of a Question Time panel that included the usual mix of politicians and celebrities (Journalist Will Self and Carol 'I've done nothing since Countdown' Vorderman were the guest celebs). My main bone of contention is with the former Countdown host, who while trying to appear to be an impartial commentator was quite clearly pushing  a conservative political agenda. Now I'm not a conservative and I didn't agree with much of what she said, but that's not my issue. My issue is that she tried to fool the audience and us at home that she wasn't repeatedly pushing an agenda only to then push said agenda with the very next breath. Whether she was talking about the public's right to know the crime John Venables' went back to prison for (we don't have a right to know by the way) or whether Lord Ashcroft was wrong to have not become a domicile of the UK when he said he would before accepting he peerage in 2000 (he was by the way) she just spouted out a load of Right Wing propoganda and slung mud at the opposition parties - that's what the politicians are there to do, celebrites are just there to prove they're not idiots and you failed. Honestly Carol, we're not stupid but you clearly are if you think we're going to fall for it. I sat there wondering whether Will Self was going to call her on it, but clearly too kind to embarrass her in front of millions simply gave her a masterclass in impartial commentary as only he can.

A quick mention for Estelle. What, if anything, were you thinking?

I was reading one of my favourite blogs the other day (Soul Bounce) and it turns out Estelle's latest track 'Freak' finally got a video. I watched it and Estelle, for whatever reason, decided that blacking up her face like some kind of freaky golliwog was a good look. We all know that Estelle's not exactly had the best stylists over the years - in fact I can't recall when she's ever looked as good as she probably could with some direction - but blacking up really?!?!?!

We all know the racial history associated with this look, so why would you want to recreate that? It's not even a parody. Then she went ahead to defend it basically saying that she's black, how can she black up? That's not an excuse... it's like a Jewish person dressing up as an Auschwitz guard and saying, it's ok I'm Jewish! It was offensive and stupid - anyone with common sense would have known better... but then again it's not common is it?