The Wiki Man | 31 May 2008

‘Linda works miracles in the kitchen while Trevor is ubiquitous with the cup that cheers.’ This sentence has haunted me for 15 years. It’s from a parody of the typical reader’s review in The Good Food Guide, probably by Craig Brown. I still quote it gnomically when asked whether some restaurant or other is any good.

These reviews were usually written by the kind of people who preferred to purchase from an emporium than to buy from a shop. The word ‘peruse’ was always a clue. ‘Reluctant to entrust navigation to my lady wife, I chose to peruse the atlas myself, necessitating the removal of my driving gloves.’ Later, ‘ensconced in a nearby hostelry’, the writer would relax by ‘partaking of ales in the company of mine host’.
Back then, professional writers had little to fear from amateurs. Not only because space in print was necessarily limited, but also because non-professional writing was often dire.