So I went out for dinner Wednesday night with Greg…

Yeah, Greg. Geezer from ‘Masterchef’. Oh, weren’t you invited? Yeah, lots of (very B-list) celebs take me out… Angelina (keep your hands to YOURSELF, Jolie, I’m a married man), Prince Andrew (I’m not going to the school gates with you again, Andy, I’m hungry), Taylor Swift (ok I WILL let you pay but only if you don’t write another song about me, it gets embarrassing).

Ok, it was sort of a work thing and he, Greggy, was the ‘host’. But I didn’t go for Greg. I went because it was at a new Indian restaurant run by a Michelin starred chef in a hotel in Canary Wharf. Well, not IN, in, that would be something floating, but in the area.

Which was the problem. Ok, the (fucking) Jubilee Line in the (fucking) rush hour was a bit of a (fucking) problem. Then you emerge! Into the daylight, just. And its… its… its just beautiful. Who’d’a thought. The Isle of Dogs now looks like that. Millwall Man now wears a suit. And appears to have been born in Shanghai. Because even though Canada Tower went up about 25 years ago, I’ve managed to avoid going to that area ever since. Mainly because no-one’s invited me to a free Indian meal, or I’d have gone sooner. There is precisely nowhere on Earth I wouldn’t go for a Lamb pasander and a chapati that someone else is paying for.

So we emerged onto this rather wonderful, skyscrapery wonderland surrounded by various bits of waterway, and other than the fact its a bit soulless, its great. So, being the super-hi-tech-kid-of-the-millennium type dude, I hit google maps and it told me I was just about 11 minutes walk from my destination. Easy-bloody-peasy. Obviously, being google maps, it doesn’t exactly tell you in which direction may lie that destination, but it does show you… something. A little man. A lot of dots. Some roads, possibly, could be streams, could be walkways.

30 minutes later we arrived. Flustered, stressed and embarrassed, having totally given up, jumped in a taxi, only to be told “nah mate, iss juss’a round dat corner. Take me longer in da cab dan you cud walk it, innit” and he threw us out.

The food didn’t taste of Michelins. It tasted pretty good though. And Greg was… well, you know Greg!!! Oh, I forgot, you don’t know him. I do. Oh well. And I must admit I have never watched Masterchef even en passant. If I’m flicking and it’s on, I keep flicking. No interest.

But no longer. Now I’m getting the box sets, the dvd collections of the old series, I’ve ordered a t-shirt and I’ll never again miss a single second. That’s what being a best mate is all about.

Happy Friday

A xxxx