The hat made me do it.

Well, I guess I've always wondered how a restaurant critic would view his life. I mean, say, compared to a doctor or a conservationist, or a teacher; how can one go on from day to day pretending your life is in any way meaningful, when your job is to nitpick food preparation and presentation, in the full knowledge that half the world would be grateful for just SOMETHING to eat, anything. Yet here he is complaining that his fois gras was a little too mealy, or the mix of fresh ingredients in his compote au bollocks had slightly too much cardamom. Perhaps his Chablis was slightly too acidic. If that was me I don't think I'd wait for the revolution. I'd be hanging around on the streets of Hackney at 3am insulting the crack dealers, just to get it over with quickly. In many ways my life is pretty meaningless at the moment, but at least I do nothing at all during the day. Gill's job renders his life even more meaningless than mine: to put that much time and effort into something so steeped in hubris, so detached from reality... How does he do it and have a heart and a healthy moral compass?

Today we have our answer. He has no heart. He has no moral compass. He proudly writes about shooting a baboon, Yeah, why not? To shoot a baboon or not to shoot a baboon? Well, that's a discussion I'll leave to others. Incidentally, he thought it was because he was wearing a hunter's hat that he wanted to do it. What strikes me really though, is not his attempt to shift the blame to the milliner, but really, how far divorced from reality do you have to be to think that writing about it in your restaurant review column is a good idea? Writing, and writing proudly. He would have run it past his moral compass, but, of course, not having one he fell back on the old "Gilly knows best" routine. Why didn't he blow up a few aid trucks whilst he was at it and blame it on high jinks? Maybe order the most expensive food he could find in Africa, walk past all the slums and then pour it into the sea, all because a fuzzy wuzzy didn't show him due deference? Then he could tell us all about it in his column. Come on Gilly, that would be BRILLIANT.