Diet secrets of the billionaires

The Billionaires’ Diet Book would not be a bestseller — or so I judge from limited experience of lunching with the denizens of this week’s Sunday Times Super-Rich List. They’re just not happy eaters. Lord Bamford (£3.1 billion) described the elegant little salad served in his office as ‘rabbit food’. In 48 hours of partying across India with Sir Richard Branson (£3.6 billion), I never once saw him tackle a sumptuous buffet. As for the list’s winners, Sri and Gopi Hinduja (£11.9 billion), they’re so fastidious that ‘when a dinner guest of the Queen, the teetotal and vegetarian Sri is said to bring his own food’: if I’d known that was the etiquette, I’d have taken a Whopper Meal with me when I tried to interview them.

Perhaps one of the secrets of wealth is to watch what you eat — I imagine oligarchs employ tasters against the risk of poisoning by their rivals — but the super-rich might be more lovable if they were seen to enjoy the pleasures of the table like the rest of us.

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer’s Any