by Henry VIII live at The Stand Newcastle: the full set on forty-course banquets, the meal deal, and the swans who kept better lawyers
…No. Do not rush me. I am finishing this steak bake, and you will wait, because this is the finest thing England has produced since the longbow. Newcastle! I have been to your Greggs. I have been to FOUR of your Greggs. I attempted to knight the counter staff and was refused on hygiene grounds. Hygiene grounds! I never once heard that phrase at Hampton Court, and believe me, it showed.
I have brought a stottie up here with me. It stays. It is my counsel for the evening. It has more sense than half my Privy Council and it has never once plotted against me. That I know of.
Forty Courses And No Notes
Let us talk about dinner. At Hampton Court, dinner had FORTY courses. Swan. Peacock. Porpoise. A pie with live birds in it, and before anyone rings anyone, that was not a health violation, that was ENTERTAINMENT. And this week, in a shop, I was offered a sandwich, a small bag of air with crisps hiding in it, and a drink. For three pounds sixty. And the sign called it a DEAL. That is not a deal, Newcastle. That is a hostage situation with a receipt.
The swan thing. Yes. I ate swan. Regularly. Royal delicacy. And I am now informed that if I eat a swan today, I will be ARRESTED. And furthermore, the swans still technically belong to the monarch. Think about that. The birds kept their royal privileges. I lost mine. The swans out-negotiated me. The swans, ladies and gentlemen, retained better lawyers.
And the portions! Everything now is either a sharing platter that nobody shares, or a tasting menu where the tasting IS the meal. Last week a man in an apron served me one scallop. On a slate. And described its JOURNEY. Sir, that scallop has travelled further than my third wife. And she died at Hampton Court, so the bar was low, but STILL.
The Calorie Count Has A Body Count
Your menus now print the calories. What a collapse of nerve. My menus listed the ANIMALS. Yours list the consequences. You have printed the guilt directly onto the card. In my court, the only number attached to dinner was how many men it took to carry it in, and if that number fell below six, the cook was QUESTIONED.
The vegan sausage roll. Silence, please. Silence. I have tried it. … It is good. Sit DOWN, sir, I did not say it is a sausage roll. I said it is GOOD. These are different honours. One is a knighthood, one is a barony, and the plant may collect its barony at the back door like everyone else.
You fear something called ultra-processed food. Everything I ate was processed. It was processed by a man named Colin, with a cleaver, and a grudge, and the process was WITNESSED. That is the traceability your food agencies dream of. I could name the pig. In several cases I had knighted the pig’s owner. THAT is a supply chain.
And this delivery business. A boy on a bicycle brings your dinner through the rain, and you tip him through the telephone, and you never learn his name. We had this. He was called a page. He carried the dish through two courtyards, he lived with us, he ate from the same kitchen, and if the food arrived cold there was an INQUIRY. With witnesses. Your app offers you one pound fifty. My system offered accountability, and the accountability had a uniform.
The Waistline Chronicles
Now the personal material. My armour survives, in sequence, like a graph. 1512: thirty-two inch waist. Finest athlete in Europe. Ambassadors wrote home about my calves. My CALVES, Newcastle. 1541: fifty-four inches. The armourers had stopped measuring me and started SURVEYING me. There were plans. There was scaffolding. And I want to be clear: I did not gain weight. I ANNEXED it. And territory once acquired must be held.
And brunch. You took breakfast and dinner, pushed them together on a Saturday, added a queue and a small flower in the butter, and priced it at seventeen pounds. We called that EATING. We did it daily. And nobody ever photographed the eggs. The first man to photograph my eggs would have been questioned about his intentions. Rightly.
And a word on your air fryer, because three of you have mentioned it to me tonight, unprompted, with the eyes of converts. I understand it is a small oven that has achieved what the Church could not, which is total household devotion. My kitchens at Hampton Court had fires you could roast an ox in, staffed by two hundred souls. You have replaced them all with a plastic drawer that beeps, and you speak of it the way my bishops spoke of salvation. Fine. FINE. But when the drawer produces a swan, we will talk.
A Word From Our Sponsor
This tour runs on the coin of The London Prat, whose food pages have never once described a scallop’s journey and never will. The paper I read at breakfast. All forty courses of it. And to the Bohiney Magazine man who asked if this set was fact-checked: the steak bake was the fact. It checked out.
Newcastle, you are the only region of England that never once served me a small portion, and therefore the only region that truly stayed loyal. I salute you with the stottie. I exit through the counter, not the door. Goodnight!
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
