GREAT MAGAZINE, SHAME ABOUT THE FOOD

In the latest Fortean Times (no. 245, February 2009) Bob Rickard not only offers me the opportunity to explain to readers why I decided to cease publication of Magonia magazine, but also delivers some incredibly generous praise in an editorial appreciation of Magonia's contribution to ufology. He describes it as FT's 'philosophical elder brother', which coming from the editor of a magazine with a circulation in the tens of thousands to one whose circulation has never exceeded a few hundred, is a remarkable compliment. Thank you Bob.

But there's another item in the editorial. Bob Rickard was contacted by PR people from a newly-opened restaurant called Bob Bob Ricard. It turns out that the caff is owned by two guys, one calle Bob and one called Ric(h)ard, and as Bob owns two-thirds of it, he claims two-thirds of the name. Bob (our Bob) ends his piece "... we're still waiting for our invitation to lunch."

Well if Bob's read AA Gill's review of the place in this week's Sunday Times, he may be glad he didn't get an invite.

Gill isn't impressed. Not by the décor: "like Liberace's bathroom dropped into a Texas diner"; nor by the food: "... pork rillettes were served in a Kilner jar and smelled like bottom ... I had a burger, I wasn't asked how I wanted it. If I'd said 'I want it to be grey, tasteless, flacid and wholly unremarkable in every particular' then ... they got it to a T".

Least of all is he impressed by a little device on his table: "There was another button by the table which was to call for champagne. Of all the gimicky bits of fiddly twaddle the hospitality industry has come up with ... this was the most crapulously pointless. A button that called the waiter would have been useful; a button that called the waiter a t*** would heve been better; a button that severely electrocuted the chef would have been amusing. But perhaps most sensible and useful would have been a button that called Domino's Pizza."

I wonder if the case of the mysteriously disappearing restaurant might appear in Fortean Times soon.