Welcome to the Grumpiest Lunch of All Time.
That’s what I expected on a recent visit to Otto’s, a delicious French restaurant in Gray’s Inn Road, London.
I trembled at the guest list: Matthew Norman, the Oldie’s Grumpy Oldie Man columnist; John Humphrys, the Rottweiler of the Today programme; and Anne Robinson, the Queen of Mean.
In fact, they're all charmers. Anne Robinson is so genial that she was accompanied by her ex-husband, journalist John Penrose - who she calls ’The nicest person you’ve ever met'.
It just goes to prove a theory once put to me by the late James Michie, poet and publisher. He said those who present a grumpy facade in public invariably turn out to be kind, thoughtful figures in private.
The rule certainly applied to the late Auberon Waugh and the late Barry Humphries and his arch-enemies, Sir Les Patterson and Dame Edna Everage. For all their outspokenness on stage and on the page, they were sweet and gentle when you met them in the flesh.
The theory may sound paradoxical but it makes sense. To put yourself forward in public as grumpy shows an admirable lack of vanity.
And the reverse is true. Those who present themselves as lovely pussycats in public are often monsters in the flesh. I can’t give my examples - because they’re also exactly the sort of monsters who sue for libel.
