John's green menu

Welcome to Gormley's Glorious Gluttonous Gorger, my lovely restaurant. No dead flesh allowed. Not even beef tomatoes. Even our eggplants are free-range.

Can you come in? Of course you can. But first, I'm afraid you'll have to pay our annual membership fee. You're not tourists are you? No? Sorry, but I have to ask. You see, there's lots of folk pretending to be tourists taking advantage of the fact that genuine ones don't have to pay.

Right so, the process is simple enough. Just cough up the fee upfront and you can come in any time you like.

We have devised a clever sliding pay scale based on stomach capacity. The fatter you are, the more we are assuming you will eat.

So, chubby chaps with, say, a stomach capacity of two litres pay a certain amount, while those with a three-litre one pay considerably more.

Tiny little 1.6-litre ones are charged far less and so on. You get the idea.

Pardon? No, no, of course it doesn't cover everything. That's just to get in the door. Think of it as a kind of door tax. You'll still have to pay for your food if you want to fill up. Oh, and additional tolls may also apply on special dishes.

Actually, as a matter of fact, you're lucky you arrived now. I'm planning to hike up the prices next year. Why? Well, there's a problem with our food. It's great and people can't get enough of it, but it creates huge amounts of, erm, how do I put this nicely . . . fumes.

Don't mean to put you off your food, but these fumes are killing the planet. Which won't do. At all. Not to mention the fact we are locked into an international restaurant-owners' agreement that we signed several years ago in the lovely Japanese town of Kyoto, obliging us to cut the amount of waste gases that our customers produce. We get charged if they exceed these limits. As you can imagine, it's getting very expensive.

It's obviously not in our interest to stop you from eating, as we make too much profit from it, but we do need to try to make money somewhere to pay the bills. So we're taxing tummies.

Why? Well, anyone knows the bigger your stomach, the more emissions you produce. That's an indisputable fact.

What's that? It depends on what the person eats? Or on how much they eat? Or on how good their plumbing is?

You're trying to tell me that someone with a fit, healthy two litre stomach can produce less toxic fumes than a chap with a wrecked, poorly maintained 1.3 litre one? And possibly even consume less food in the process?

Pull the other one, pal. What tree do you think I fell out of? Do you think I hit the gullible branches on the way down?

What do you mean just scrap the membership fee and increase the price of food instead? It would be fairer and simpler, you say? Who said anything about fairness or simplicity? I did? When? What's that? You remember that before I owned a restaurant I promised if I ever did own one I'd abolish membership fees altogether "in order to promote a fairer system" and simply whack up the price of food instead?

Oh, all right, so I did say that.

You've got me there. But I did say I'd do it on a phased basis over the course of five years. Pardon? Erm, well, that's right. It does seem a bit odd that the first phase in reducing fees is jacking them up.

Listen, between you and me, my hands are tied. I'm ashamed to say I had to do a deal with some ravenous carnivores to get this place. So please don't kick up a fuss. I'd look a bit silly if anyone found out. If I let you in for nothing, will you keep it under your hat? There's a free tofu burger in it for you too. What do you say? Please?