By providence, a preacher worth watching

Preacher – the cast

It’s been pretty much gospel that Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s seminal comic series, Preacher, would never make it on screen.

Rambling across 75 issues from 1996 to 2000, the Vertigo-published story was apparently stuck in various layers of development hell for years, amid general feelings that it was ultimately impossible to film.

But fast forward a few years, when Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Sam Catlin took up the challenge for AMC – and now we’re able to see the results.

In the UK, the pilot premiered as an Amazon Prime exclusive a fortnight ago. The first ordinary episode will air on 6 June, also on Amazon.

So far, we’ve had the chance to meet the three main protagonists: Jesse Custer, a small-town Texas preacher with a dodgy past who is struggling with his faith; Cassidy, an Irish vampire, and Tulip O’Hare, Jesse’s gun-toting ex.

Around the world, various clergy are exploding in front of their congregations in an unexplained manner – apparently, this includes leading Scientologist Tom Cruise, which may give you an idea of the humour on display.

But while Jesse prays for God to give him a sign of his existence, his body is invaded by something that gives him a strange, new power over people – although he has yet to realise this.

If it has moments that seem to channel Tarantino, it also has moments of surprising tenderness – not least in how Jesse treats the bullying sheriff’s son, a young man whose attempted suicide by shooting himself in the mouth has failed, leaving him disfigured in such a way as to become known as ‘Arseface’.

The whole thing is dark, violent, funny, mixed-up and deeply un-PC stuff; part western, part road movie, part crime caper, part supernatural thriller, part horror story – but if you’ve ever read the comic, you’ll already know this.

And if you haven’t, then you’re in for a wild, genre-defying ride – and not one for those inclined to take offence easily.

It looks superb, with a wonderful sense of the vastness of the Texan landscape.

And the casting appears inspired. Dominic Cooper looks perfect as the eponymous cleric and nicely conveys the conflicts in the character.

Ruth Negga as Tulip is as feisty and takes-no-nonsense as you’d expect, but it has to be said, on this first outing at least, that Joseph Gilgun is going to steal the show as Cassidy.

It’s a fascinating point that none of this triumvirate of leading actors are from the US: Cooper and Gilgun are English; Negga is Ethiopian/Irish.

And that continues throughout the cast.

On the basis of the pilot, we’re in for a thoroughly entertaining time.

But the start of Preacher was not the only comic-related noteworthy moment of last week.

Arriving on my desk was a very nice hardback edition of the first four issues of Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows.

This short series of just 12 issues started last year. This first trade is a hardback, limited to just 6,666 copies.

Set in 1919 in the US, Moore returns to his exploration of Lovecraftian horror, intertwining it with elements of real history to create a layered story.

The central character here is Robert Black, a young man trying to make his way as a writer, first as a New York reporter and then with the aim of writing a Great American Novel about the occult ‘outsiders’ that he seeking out – as a metaphor for social outsiders in the country.

And central to this is Black’s own mixed status: at once, part of the privileged white establishment, he is also Jewish and gay, hiding both from most of those he encounters.

But for all that, he is also not immune to bigotry himself.

Some commentators have noted that Black is not particularly likeable. The real point is that he is a flawed and complex character – which is actually what you expect in something by Moore.

And this being a Moore work, it also defies it’s nature as a comic to include substantial amounts of text – both pages from Black’s diary and also from leaflets and books he collects.

Burrow’s art works well in conveying a sepia world that is never far from the strange and the dark.

All in all, a grown-up comic treat.

Why would you lie about what TV you watch?

Minions rock

For many people, Monday was the first back at work after Christmas – and therefore the first time to have those water cooler discussions about the festive TV.

To be honest, I’m not a big telly watcher. Only a couple of days ago, a story caught my eye, as a survey revealed that people lie about what television they watch.

In particular, it emerged, people have lied about watching Breaking Bad – presumably because they considered they had to claim to have watched it because it was so ‘in’.

Well, I didn’t watch it and am not going to pretend I did, any more than I have watched Game of Thrones or The Wire or assorted other series with equally glowing reputations.

I haven’t been addicted to any TV drama since The West Wing and, before that, Babylon 5.

Away from the dramatic, Masterchef: The Professionals has been the limit of any must-watch mentality.

Anthony Hopkins does Hitch

And while I can entirely understand people falling for a particular programme, I can neither understand telling porkies just to look as though you’ve seen one (and how would you be able to comment on it anyway?) nor the seasonal syndrome of whinging that there’s ‘nothing on’ over Christmas.

Given how many channels most people have these days, it’s difficult to believe that there’s nowt on that you’d watch at all, while it’s straightforwardly inaccurate to assert that there’s ‘nothing’ on.

I did actually slump in front of the goggle box over the holiday, usually while doing cuddle duty to a small black cat who curled up in my arms, snoozing away and occasionally dreaming – presumably of chasing butterflies.

And so here, for what it’s worth, are my highlights – with no efforts at coolness or trendiness whatsoever.

'What do you mean we have to do another convention?'

The first thing that I actually bothered to sit down and pay attention to was on a disc – the 2012 film Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins as the eponymous thriller director and Helen Mirren as his wife and longtime collaborator, Alma Reville.

Set against the background of the making of Psycho, Sacha Gervasi’s film explores the relationship between the two, the creative impulse, the impact on the psyche of working with particularly dark material, and the nature of voyeurism.

It’s intelligent, witty, bitchy and poignant: grown-up entertainment with a universally super cast. The leads are, of course, absolutely fabulous, but so too are Scarlett Johannsson as Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles and Michael Wincott as Ed Gein in particular.

Wonderful stuff.

It was about as serious as my film viewing got. Galaxy Quest, the 1999 spoof of Star Trek and sci-fi fandom in general – and first seen by The Other Half and I in an Art Deco cinema in Amsterdam – is always a delight, with a great cast headed by Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman.

After that, it was a quick channel hop to 2010’s Despicable Me, which I had not seen before and, having ‘discovered’ the Minions, felt the need to view.

Joyous cast overload

While certainly not in the very top echelon of current animation, it was thoroughly enjoyable and happily avoided mawkishness, even though featuring three orphans. Oh, and the Minions are wonderful.

For really top-quality animation, there were screenings of Ratatouille (2007), which I love, and Up (2009) – both from Disney/Pixar.

When computer animation first appeared, I watched shorts and loved them, but did wonder whether the medium would detract from content in a more extended form. Both these films show that it hasn’t.

The film watching concluded with a chance to catch up with another 2012 effort: this time, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, Quartet.

Ready to save the world. Again

A comedy drama, based on Ronald Harwood’s play of the same name, it’s set in a retirement establishment for musicians, who mark Verdi’s birthday each year with a fundraising gala that helps keep their home going.

Retired opera singers Reg, Wilf and Cissy have worked together in the past, particularly on a noted recording of Verdi’s Rigoletto, which includes a famous quartet for soprano, mezzo, tenor and baritone.

And when Reg’s former wife, Jean – the fourth member of that quartet – turns up as a new resident, she unwillingly inspires an idea about how to boost the success of the gala.

It’s a thin plot, but does have underlying themes of age and ageing, which rarely get seen on the big screen these days. But it’s the cast that makes it such a joy.

It's a what I call a comedy

Maggie Smith, Tom Courtney, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins make up the quartet of singers, and are joined by Michael Gambon, Sheridan Smith, Andrew Sachs, Trevor Peacock, Michael Byrne and David Ryall (who sadly died on Christmas Day).

An unmitigated delight.

Away from films, Christmas Day offered up a seasonal Doctor Who, complete with a Santa unlike any other – and I am enjoying Peter Capaldi’s characterisation – and the first half of a two-part final episode of Miranda, which appears to be the epitome of everything that is uncool if you care about these things.

It makes me laugh, so who cares? As may be clear, I don’t watch television just to feel ‘in’.

Miranda Richardson as the wonderfully dreadful Mapp

Oddly, my mother later declared that she and my father had watched the second half of this two-parter, having never watched any Miranda before – and then felt cheated when they didn’t ‘get it’.

Mind, she also sent my jaw into freefall at Christmas by asking if I watched Mrs Brown’s Boys, saying that, although it had “a lot of the ‘f’ word” in it, you “couldn’t help but laugh”.

Meanwhile, the film version of Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang was a gentle delight, with Imelda Stanton and Michael Ball in fine fettle, while a repeat of the 2009 festive special, Victoria Wood’s Mid Life Christmas, with its vast guest cast, was appreciated a great deal more than at the time – not least as I caught the sense of the overarching theme that had eluded me originally.

And then there was Mapp and Lucia, the BBC’s three-night dive into EF Benson’s novels of upper-middle-class one-upmanship and snobbery in the 1920s and ’30s.

I remember the Channel 4 adaptation from the 1980s, with Prunella Scales, Geraldine McEwan and Nigel Hawthorne: indeed, I caught the first episode again recently, but it only served to remind me of why I hadn’t really got into it the first time around and why I’d never felt the desire to read the novels.

Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball do Fred & Ginger

This new adaptation by Steve Pemberton – who also played Georgie – made me want to do precisely that.

Starring Anna Chancellor as Lucia and Miranda Richardson as Mapp, with a wonderful supporting cast, it managed to be, all at once, subtle, sharp as a box of unused Sabatiers – and outrageously camp.

Richardson in particular was just magnificent – oh, to be able to gurn like that!

So even for a non TV addict like me, there was plenty to amuse. And given catch-up television, there’s plenty of chance to catch up with any of these if you missed them and feel vaguely inspired to do so now.

They will not, however, make you ‘TV cool’.

And even if none of this was particularly up your own street, just don’t claim that there was ‘nothing on’!

A cracked-egg omelette is not cracking idea

Living is learning, so they say. And the latest lesson is simple: if an egg is cracked, don’t use it.

It was a pleasant enough bank holiday Monday. I had spent the morning pottering around the garden, with a certain sense of pleasure as various plants finally look like they're going to grow properly.

And if the weather in general has been dismal for the last umpteen months, May’s two bank holidays have been uncharacteristically good.

Monday wasn’t as glorious as Sunday had been – there was more wind and more cloud, and it was never going to be a second successive day spent sitting out with a book, getting the beginnings of a tan – but let’s not complain given the generally dire situation otherwise.

And it was good enough to feel inspired to sow salad leaves and courgettes.

So in the early afternoon, hungry from labour in the potager, I headed into the kitchen to look for some much-needed lunch.

I was contemplating hard-boiling an egg for a quick salad or sandwich, but then I spotted that two in the tray were cracked. One was so much of a mess that it went straight out and the ceramic tray needed cleaning.

The second had a cracked shell, but the membrane was intact. Having not seen these cracks before and having known that the eggs had only been decanted into the tray a day or so earlier, it seemed reasonable to assume that the breaks were new.

Instead of wasting the second, I decided to use it for part of an omelette.

All of which seemed perfectly fine – although a point here: I like my omelettes lightly cooked.

A few hours later, as a piece of lamb was roasting in the oven, I started to feel twinges of nausea and a growing gut ache.

By the time that dinner was ready, I didn’t want anything at all – that's right, I didn't want roast lamb with Jersey Royals and asparagus.

I went to bed early, struggling to get comfortable between visits to the bathroom.

The worst was reached at about 1am, when I was perched on the throne, beaded with cold sweat and desperately grasping the one receptacle within reach – a spare litter tray.

Yesterday was spent almost entirely in bed – unprecedented – and even today, I still feel a little like a wrung-out dishcloth.

Now it could have been a bug, but if so, it bypassed The Other Half completely.

So, remember: if an egg is cracked, don’t assume it’s only just been cracked and is therefore safe to eat.

I have only myself to blame, but I like to think that I experience such things so that you don’t have to.

A steaming pile of something or other

On a somewhat different note – but every bit as cracked – in an effort to aid my recovery last night, I sat down to watch the first episode (well, the first one being shown in the UK) of Jo on Fox.

Now this had been anticipated for some weeks because it’s a cop show, starring the watchable Jean Reno and set in Paris.

Just over a week ago, I watched Buddenbrooks, the 2008 film version with the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl. It’s only available in German, but fortunately I know the story so well it was not wasted on me.

And besides, there was the sheer joy of being able to sit there, going: ‘been there’; ‘seen that’; been down that street’; ‘know where that is’ for substantial amounts of screen time, since it was filmed in Lübeck itself.

Yes, yes, I’ve done it watching reruns of Van der Valk too, and in more than a few other films and programmes.

But here was an opportunity to do the same with Paris – combined with Reno and a genre I am far from immune to.

Oh. Dear.

There are problems right away in that it’s a joint Canadian and French co-production. So most of the cast were north Americans – in some cases playing north Americans and in others, French characters.

The only bona fide French person in it – and with the only French accent – was Reno.

So that’s confusing to start with.

Second, though: if you’re really going to go for the already-clichéd idea of the top cop with a troubled private life, make some effort to take it into territory beyond the cliché of booze.

Example?Wallander – and not least in the English-language version with Kenny Branagh, which went seriously existential.

Third, if you’re going to spend a lot of money making your location one of the stars of the show, then use it well.

Fourth, for god’s sake give the cast at least five minutes rehearsal time. It’s entirely bad enough Reno sleep-walking through it – at least he’s got some presence – but everyone else cannot simply rely on that.

Fifth – by the time I get to considering the clichéd plot, I’m in need of cliché detox.

Honestly – I’d looked forward to this, but it did my fragile health no favours.

So there you have it – a rare TV review. And the message is simple: don’t waste your time.

Misogyny isn't a laughing matter – but Miranda is

Miranda – getting in a pickle again.

It’s been observed more than once that the British love nothing better than to knock anyone who has become successful – and you could be forgiven for wondering if it's even more the case when women are concerned.

Andrew Billen in The Times (by subscription) rather started this particular outbreak by suggesting out that Miranda Hart is guilty, in her TV show, of misogyny.

Now let’s get this straight: this is Miranda Hart, female of the species. Apparently guilty of promoting a hatred of the same.

You’d expect the Murdoch-owned press to actually know what that meant, but it appears not.

Not, of course, that Billen is alone. When Lucy Mangan in the Guardian took the opportunity to rebut his silliness, dozens of online readers flung themselves at the opportunity to reveal their own intellectual credentials by pouring scorn on Hart and anyone who finds her work funny.

“Morons,” was how one person described the latter, with the obvious, unspoken point being: ‘Look at me – look how really hip and clever I am’.

Actually, you’re the one who’s a pompous little snob and, frankly, a bit of a wanker.

You don’t have to like Hart. You don’t have to find her funny. Nobody has to. But then again, that’s not really the point.

Comedy and humour – perhaps almost more than anything else in life – are utterly subjective. What tickles one person will leave another cold.

I remember seeing Victoria Wood live. By the end of the evening, I was in agony from laughing. Yet a woman just nearby hadn’t even managed to smile.

Hyacinth Bucket – you wouldn't want her as a neighbour.

Each to their own.

Quite clearly it’s idiocy to suggest that Hart’s work is misogynistic. On what grounds could that possibly be the case? Because the characters she creates are not all ‘perfect’?

I suspect that a lot of people like her show and her comedic style precisely because of its apparent lack of sophistication and, in the case of Hart herself, because she’s not a super model but yet seems entirely comfortable in her own skin.

And for goodness sake – she creates biscuit blizzards with biscuits and a hairdryer, and farts: a woman with flatulence! It's the unspoken; the stuff we're not supposed to do and certainly not supposed to confess to doing.  

Slapstick it may be, but slapstick is still comedy. Hey ho – it never harmed the likes of Buster Keaton or Laurel & Hardy.

Funnily enough, there was a programme on a few days ago about Stanley Baxter. Now, given that Baxter’s prime was in the 1970s on ITV, I saw none of it – my snobbish mother tried to protect us from anything on that commercial channel.

So almost all of the material on this documentary was new to me. And it barely raised a smirk. Part of that was because a lot of Baxter’s comedy was based on impersonation – he wasn’t bad at it – but that means it’s very time-sensitive.

I did know most of the people he was impersonating, but it felt dated and, while not unfunny, certainly didn’t make me laugh.

Patsy – Ab Fab and absolutely hideous.

I suspect that the same will be said of Rory Bremner in years to come – although personally, I think that Bremner is brilliant. But it’s exactly why Mike Yarwood has faded from view.

That doesn’t mean that Baxter was poor – or those who consider him brilliant are ‘morons’. Just that it didn't tickle my funny bone.

The thing with Hart, though, is that slapstick is a lot more durable – see the aforementioned Keaton, Laurel & Hardy et al.

But setting that aside, one wonders whether Billen thought that Absolutely Fabulous was misogynistic too. After all, the characters in that are far less likeable and sympathetic than those in Miranda.

Then again, some of the best comedy characters are the most dreadful ones – and there have been some fabulously dreadful female comic creations. Patsy in Ab Fab is one such creation.

Would Billen suggest that Roy Clarke was a misogynist for his creation of the utterly awful Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances? Would Patricia Routledge herself be guilty of misogyny for breathing life into Clarke’s words?

Nora Batty – scary, except to Compo.

Mind, Clarke might well be a serial offender: how many harridans did he create in Last of the Summer Wine? It certainly wasn’t limited to the iconic Nora Batty.

And exactly the same can be said of male characters too.

Anyone remember the Brittas Empire? And what about Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave?

And as for suggestions the slapstick is infantile – well, see above; and did anyone bemoan Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses for the moment that he falls through the pub counter?

Of course not – it’s classic comedy. Comedy and slapstick are not synonyms, but they’re hardly alien either.

Personally, I can enjoy and appreciate Family Guy, South Park, The Thick of It – and Miranda. They’re not exclusive.

And even if I couldn’t, that doesn’t make it bad. That would merely be a reflection of a very subjective reaction. Neither a ‘wrong’ reaction nor a ‘right’ one, but a personal one.

I do wonder, though, how much of these sort of complaints are not only a result of pseudo-intellectual snobbery, but also of sexism.

More times than I can remember, I’ve seen posters online – invariably male – saying that they couldn’t think of a genuinely funny woman.

Really? I can think of several. Equally, there are others that I don’t personally find funny. And there are plenty of male comics I’ll laugh my socks off at, plus plenty more that leave me cold.

Why is this apparently so difficult?

My suspicion is that most people judge a lot of comedy on the basis of its relationship to their own lives. So for instance, if a female comic tells gags about periods, it may well fall flat for men in the audience. And the same goes the other way – knob jokes may simply bore women.

Maybe it's also a resistance to the idea of women behaving in a less than 'ladylike' manner. There are plenty of reports that female stand-ups get heckled more than men. Is this an outrage at women daring to forget their 'place'?

But it does seem odd that so many people seem apparently incapable of recognising any of this – particularly ones who think they're clever.

Heaven help us if we want to enforce some form of political correctness on comedy – that everything must be funny for everyone or that everything will have to be meet with the approval of some specially chosen arbiters of laughter.

Although you never know though; there could be a comedy in that …

TV dinners

Bad cop, inheritor of Escoffier, and a teddy bear gourmand.

In the dim and distant past, when TV really was the centre of my childhood home's entertainment, I used to yearn for the lowering evenings that brought with them the autumn season.

But for most of my adulthood, television has played a considerably less important role.

There have been exceptions: Babylon 5, West Wing and a few more. But the advent of ‘reality TV’ was enough to make me glad I wasn’t addicted to the box in the corner.

But this autumn, there has been a glut of food scheduling that’s had me glued to my seat – and thankfully it’s not all been Nigella flirting with the camera and wearing white denim to cook beetroot.

Last year, entirely by accident, I happened on a reality show that I was utterly transfixed by – and this time, I was back right at the start: Masterchef: The Professionals.

Now I dislike the version of Masterchef that involves John Torode and Gregg Wallace. First, it isn’t the Masterchef I remember with a certain fondness from years gone by, where Lloyd Grossman hosted, in calming, mid-Atlantic tones, as three amateur cooks competed in a very gentle manner.

It’s odd that I remember that with such fondness, since it was on during a time before I had any real interest in or love of food myself.

But it’s also exactly the sort of thing that I don’t like about reality TV, with its tone of shouty aggression.

This version sees Wallace transformed into a sort of teddy bear gourmand, with Monica Galetti, the senior sous chef at Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche, playing a bad cop role alongside him in the early stages of the competition.

And then, of course, there is Roux Jr himself, for whom all the contestants want to cook.

It’s grown-up telly that doesn’t feel the need to pander to sensationalism.

Criticism is dished out properly and fairly, while Roux Jr can also be seen coaching young chefs, giving tips and being encouraging.

Okay, there’s a bit of gurning from all three presenters, but this is ultimately about real, serious skills.

Which also means that it’s downright educative – and it’s inspirational too. Indeed, last year’s series was exactly what made me want to learn to lay out a plate of food better than a dollop here, a dollop there.

Only last week, I picked up a method of cooking pheasant, sautéing breast very gently in lots of butter. And as I found out last night, it works.

This is top telly, and something that I look forward to for the four nights a week that it currently occupies a slot on the goggle box.

But Masterchef: The Professionals has not been the only foodie programming in recent weeks.

There was also Escoffier: Britain’s first master chef, which was introduced – appropriately – by Michel Roux Jr.

It proved an interesting look at the great man – perhaps particularly in terms of his creation of the brigade system of service in restaurants.

And it was also a reminder of just how much the style of Roux Jr – and his father and uncle – is influenced by that kind of classic French cuisine.

How do you eat your jelly babies?

Nigel Slater’s Life is Sweets was a bittersweet trip down a sticky memory lane for England’s answer to Proust. There is simply nobody else on these shores who so wonderfully writes about food and memory.

Seeing old packets and wrappers brought an instant shot of nostalgia, even though I don’t personally have the same sense of sweets as having been at the heart of my own childhood as Slater clearly does.

But I do have childhood memories around visits to the sweet shop (or primarily the newsagent), and as usual with Slater, it had an emotional power that rang completely true even if you cannot identify 100% with his own experiences.

Calf's Head & Coffee: The Golden Age of English Food, gave Stefan Gates the chance to actually cook a calf’s head – which was interesting, although I won’t be trying it myself any time soon.

But this followed his rather astonishing claim that we are in the midst of a British food renaissance – a claim made, without any hint of his tongue being in his cheek, while standing in a supermarket.

‘Ah,” I thought. ‘Here we go again, with the sort of wild delusions that Joanna Blythman lambasts in Bad Food Britain.’

While it is most certainly true that the restaurant scene – particularly in cities – has improved massively in recent years, it’s difficult to believe in any sort of wholesale improvement when the UK consumes more ready meals than the whole of the rest of Europe put together.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner gave Clarissa Dickson Wright the chance to explore the history of our three main meals across three episodes.

Presumably filmed before she decided that Leicester was frightening and not ‘her’ England, there’s a certain irony then in her discussion of the origins of the cooked breakfast going back to religious rules, given that her beloved Catholic church has, in many parts of the UK, been saved by the arrival of migrants.

A couple of particularly fascinating aspects of this trio of programmes was learning that eggs were, a long time ago, roasted in the shell in the ashes of a fire – and also that the first reference to a soft-boiled egg anywhere in literature is in Jane Austen’s Emma, while Northanger Abbery actually references brioche.

It’s also well worth noting that our habit of drinking beer with breakfast had changed iby the 1620s – replaced by the arrival of coffee. In other words, contrary to what some may imagine, Starbucks did not introduce coffee to these shores.

So, for once, it’s been a delight to sit in front of the television and lap up a mixed menu of foodie treats.

And with iPlayer around, there's still time to watch some of these gems.

Serge Danot lied to me

I was an innocent child. There I was in my formative years – open to the power of suggestion.

And as I sat in front of the television, transfixed by the jolliness of The Magic Roundabout, I was being fed a whopping big lie.

Dogs might be daft and fun; children might be nice; rabbits might be a bit dopey but are generally fluffy and cute, and cows might be gentle.

But snails are NOT sweet and lovable. No matter how Danot – and later Eric Thompson – pretended otherwise.

They are good for only two things: as bird food, and being skewered out of their shells once cooked, and eaten, drenched in melted butter, garlic and parsley.

Okay, three things: take the shells of dead ones and crush them into soil to add calcium.

Last weekend, I replaced four pots of flowers that had been wrecked by an unholy alliance of apocalyptic weather and snails.

The British are perversely squeamish about the idea of eating snails. It is plain daft, given the traditional British predilection for whelks and winkles and cockles, but we baulk at the idea of eating Brian Snail.

That’s something the French do – along with frogs’ legs and horse. And that’s what makes us different from ‘them’.

Perhaps that was the point of the lie that Danot foisted on us?

Personally, I don’t mind eating them occasionally – and oh, I long for the chance to one day try that Catalan speciality, a cargolade: a vast banquet of barbequed snails, eaten communally at Easter and Pentecost.

But in any other sense, snails are now my sworn enemy. Indeed, that's another of Danot's deceits: how could gardener Mr McHenry have done anything but chase Brian the Snail until he'd got rid of him?

Never mind the flowers: this morning, I popped out into the garden to give a little extra water to my thirstiest plants – and found that my entire (small) crop of baby salad leaves had disappeared overnight.

Gone. The lot. As if they have never been there.

Closer inspection revealed a snail, attached to the inside of the planter, looking fat and content.

It went over the garden fence in an elegant arc, landing on the concrete of the carpark with a pleasing crack, where it will serve as a tasty snack for one of the local birds.

Seeking a quick resolution to this particular aspect of the urban garden warfare I have now become embroiled in, I asked for advice in a couple of the gardening shops on Columbia Road last week.

Given the combination of the cats and growing things for my own consumption, I don’t want to be looking at solutions that could make any possible negative impact on either of these.

The suggested answer was death by drowning in beer.

Take a pot; fill with beer (or full-fat cola); pop it near your plants and wait.

None of my local shops had the relevant pots – proper ones have lids on – so I ordered online. They have just arrived and are sitting on my desk, ready for action later.

The snails will slime their way up the side of the little pots and, in their greed, squeeze under the lids and then plop into sweet, sticky, yeasty cheap beer to die.

While waiting for the order, I improvised with a couple of shallow bowls I had. I found no drowned gastropods, but until this morning at least, I had found no more damaged plants or snails themselves either.

We shall soon find out what these little ‘snail inns’ achieve.

And in the meantime – ‘Boing’, said Zebedee.