Stalking with Marco Pierre White

Tag : hung plates

I’ve done some pretty bizarre, dangerous and disgustingthings for this magazine. I’ve spent a day walking roundLondon dressed as Mr Darcy. I’ve eaten the ark. I’vebeen to Leeds. But last week was a new low. For no better reasonthan a cheap headline, I fired a high-velocity bullet intoBambi’s face. This is the first time something actually hadto die for a piece.

I’ve known Marco Pierre White for 20 years. He is one of thefew people I can remember the exact moment of meeting. I walked into his first restaurant, Harvey’s, on Wandsworth Common. Iwas wearing a tail coat and sponge-bag trousers. He was wearing abutcher’s apron and the look of a serial killer. I was on myway to a wedding, he was on his way to greatness.

Only one of us would make it.

I was expecting two quick nouvelle-cuisine courses. Four hourslater, I had lost count of the plates. Marco sat opposite me,scribbling orders onto a pad, tearing them off, screwing them up,handing them to a poor, abused waiter, like Hitler in his bunker.He would stick his fingers into his food, into my food, through hishair. He would wave them round the restaurant. He was mesmerising.I was mesmerised and have been pretty much ever since. This wasbefore I met the Blonde. She had met Marco with the latephotographer Bob Carlos Clarke, who had photographed Marco feedingher warm oysters and tagliatelle up against a wall with hisfingers. “It was,” she says, “the rudest thing aman has ever done to me with a butcher’s apron on.”