This is from Friday (yes, I finally have a working server and access to the computer. it just takes massively inconvenient server switches and getting up at 8 on a Sunday to do it):

The Times - This tastes horrid (in my view)
We food critics have been crippled by the ruling against a newspaper for criticising a restaurant, by Giles Coren

Some months ago a complaint against a restaurant critic (made, not surprisingly, by a restaurateur) was upheld in court, and the newspaper in which it had appeared, The Irish News, was fined £25,000. Which is an awful lot of money. You can feed four people at Nobu for that.

And then yesterday the paper announced that it is to challenge the fine, with the great Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC, declaring: “It [the review] did not purport to be a factual report by a food scientist. It was a personal description by a food critic explaining why she formed a poor opinion of the restaurant… “

Bloody right. And hurrah for The Irish News for taking this thing on. Ever since the finding in Ireland we critics have had a hell of a time getting our opinions over. Until that £25,000 fine, whenever a legal department raised queries about one’s copy, one could always reply that nobody had ever successfully sued a paper over a restaurant review.

Unbelievable.

But the rest of it is hilarious.

Date: Jan 27th, 2008 · Comments RSS · Tags: Food