Want to shake hands with your dinner? Beast is your kind of restaurant

Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke beastliness, which is not really beastliness at all. It is something worse.

The outside is Dead Animal Inc: glassy, corporate, bland. The reception has a 10ft bronze bear covered with swirls which look like paisley or some photogenic skin disease. A woman presses the button inside the lift for you, should you be too stupid or lazy to do it yourself. And downstairs, as the lift opens and you peer into the dark, you see a fridge full of hanging beef with labels flickering in a cold synthetic wind. They are next to tanks of king crabs and lobsters clambering on each other. It is the most chilling lift scene I have witnessed since Michael Caine slashed a woman’s throat in a lift in Dressed To Kill while playing a transsexual psychiatrist in huge spectacles.