New York icon: Balthazar
(Picture: Getty Images)Does James Corden know where the bodies — all the bodies, literally every single body — are buried? I ask because, after years of imprisoning celebs in the Karaoke Carpool Range Rover, yesterday he managed to get restaurateur-provocateur Keith McNally to back down. Or, I should say, do a U-turn. How extremely à la mode.
As you may have read, Corden — who it honestly wouldn’t surprise me to hear was planning a hostile takeover of the upcoming Paddington reboot (starring as Paddington, the Queen and Hugh Grant) — had been banned by McNally for being both “a tiny Cretin of a man” and “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.” To be fair, Corden had threatened a bad Yelp review (always a c*** move).
A clarification should be made here. Firstly, it’s the New York Balthazar, not the Covent Garden one — even Corden isn’t that lucky — and secondly these are the incalcitrant McNally’s words, so it’s impossible to know any of if it’s true. And there is some reason to suspect he’s lying: the post, after all, opened by dubbing Corden a “Hugely gifted comedian”. It throws the rest of what followed into doubt.
McNally, for the unacquainted, rarely minces his words: the man is a master Instagrammer — or what you might call a marketeer (were you thinking about his restaurants much before this?). His stock-in-trade is taking the piss, at a fairly frenetic pace, and often aimed at himself. But it’s also a no-holds-barred look at the world around him: there was a particularly pleasurable takedown of David Beckham’s Qatar gig recently (“Beckham, an English national treasure with the lowest I.Q. of any soccer player on the planet…”). There was a bit on Megan Markle “crying at the drop of a hat”. He shared a story of shagging a famous actress, who he dubbed X (“not her real name”, he elucidated — perhaps for Beckham’s benefit). He’s also given a spirited appraisal of Graham Greene’s penchant for bedding other men’s wives, and long before Corden, he’d banned one-time Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on the grounds of “being a democrat”. He also once defended Woody Allen.
The thing with McNally is, you believe he believes it all. His Instagram is forthright, unquestionably his own thoughts, and it’s not all wrong, either. Filters are such boring things. He seems to have an interest in having sex in bathrooms and on bar tops. Who doesn’t? But who else says it?
And while McNally might wilfully change direction from time to time, I’ve never seen him back down — which might be why there is a rather large contingent of London’s hospitality scene who absolutely can’t stand the man. But following the first blow-up yesterday, McNally then posted a second time. “All is forgiven” the restaurateur wrote. How come? “James Corden just called me and apologized profusely”. A mate of mine knows guy in Brixton who deals profuse apologies. He takes drills with him. Or maybe there was umbrage at that hugely gifted comic line (Corden: “Funny how? Funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you?”).
So my query isn’t really about the buried bodies. I’m wondering whether McNally, New York’s fiercest restaurateur, has finally met his match. Or is his lawyer just on holiday? And if so, can he please hurry back? I don’t want to see him apologising. Well, not to James Corden, of all people. I get Truss, but I never had McNally as one for turning. Come on, Keef, you’re better than this.
