Chef Loses Restaurant Battle To Jay-Z

Imagine the confusion. It could happen to anyone. You pay millions to global rap star Jay-Z to perform at your celebrity-studded wedding and then an outdoor catering firm from Newcastle turns up instead.

What would your guests say, let alone your in-laws? How could you live with the embarrassment? And how could you ever stop such a dangerously likely event from ruining your big day?

Well, it’s exactly for this reason that the UK’s Intellectual Property Office has ruled in favour of Jay-Z in his battle with Tyneside chef Terry Miller to stop this devastating catastrophe ever happening.

The pair have been wrangling since 2006 after the American rapper’s music label Roc-A-Fella Records launched a writ against Miller’s Rockafella restaurant in Newcastle, claiming it breached its trademark rights.

Originally, Miller, winner of the Hell’s Kitchen reality show in 2005, won a ruling granting him a trademark for his Rockafella restaurant and food catering firm that gave him exclusive rights to its use in the UK.


Roc-A-Fella Records brought in heavyweight lawyers from London-based Forrester Ketley & Co to fight its case, claiming that people would be confused into thinking the two enterprises were somehow connected. (I’m not sure what sort of people they were talking about – perhaps people that appear on the Jeremy Kyle show.)

Now, surprise, surprise, the US label’s appeal has been largely upheld at a hearing in London. The bad news for Miller is he will now have to change the name of his outside catering business. The good news is he can use it for his restaurant, which he opened with his £250,000 Hell’s Kitchen winnings, even though it closed in October 2008.

In her judgement, Professor Ruth Annand said the original IP Office case manager was wrong to say the two names would not clash as a record label’s live entertainment events were not dissimilar to the catering trade.

But IP Office expert Oliver Morris said in his original ruling, which is now overturned: “There is a large degree of dissimilarity between restaurant and catering services on the one hand and the services relating to record production on the other.”

Funny how experts can disagree. (By the way, in case you’re confused, the internationally famous music star Jay-Z is pictured top, and Miller is pictured second next to Gary ‘Twat’ Rhodes. And in case you’re confused further, Rhodes is the one with hair.)

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What A Squeak! The Tale Of Malty Mouse

This story about a man getting the shock of his life by finding a mouse splayed across the top of his malt loaf has brought back some unhappy memories.

He bought the Hyndman's malt loaf from a supermarket in the Ballymoney area of Northern Ireland for Christmas two years ago. But God knows what he’d done to upset Santa that year.

One can only imagine the moment he unwrapped the delicious loaf to discover the lifeless mammal embedded in the base of the bread, like Ida, the celebrated ‘missing link’ fossil unveiled in New York last month.

North Antrim Magistrates Court heard that the bread tins were filled with dough every night, and the mouse got in sometime between the tins being sprayed with oil and being filled with dough.

A judge was shown pictures of the incriminating rodent-in-the-loaf and fined D Hyndman and Son Ltd £1,000 plus costs for placing unsafe food on the market.

A defence lawyer suggested the mouse might have been put in the tin to "sabotage" the baker who has been in business for 60 years and has never had any complaints.

The hapless customer is now said to be pursuing a civil case against the firm.

Poor buggers. Mice get everywhere. Doesn’t matter how many traps you set.

Reminds me of the time I was living in a shared house on the Old Kent Road with about 300 Kiwis (don’t feed them water) when I popped some bread in the toaster and saw a small flash from the corner of my eye.

I thought nothing of it, of course, and began buttering my toast furiously, ready for a liberal application of Marmite when I spotted some blue furry mould on the bread.

Perfectly alright I thought, as Sir Julian Bashford would say. Besides I was hungry and those pesky Kiwis had nicked the rest of my bread.

Trouble was it didn’t look like normal mould. It just seemed to be attached to one side of the slice.

I took a couple of bites and then looked down into the bottom of the toaster and saw the electrified mouse. Haven’t eaten toast to this day. Or malt loaf for that matter.

Ramsay's Roasting Over 'Lesbian Pig' Slur

I’ve got a bad feeling about Gordon Ramsay – is the man finally losing the plot? Are his antics Down Under now one step too far?

Has Ramsay – the man who could once do no wrong, the man who could get away with shouting at Edwina Currie that it wasn’t enough for her to fuck the Prime Minister, she had to fuck Ramsay (up the ass) too – finally bitten off more than even he can chew?

He is already on the back foot following allegations about a long-term affair, claims about exaggerating his football career, the ready-meals debacle, the crumbling business empire, and getting kicked out of the list of the world’s top 100 restaurants.

So even for a chef with the size of his balls and ego, it may have seemed a little foolish – not to say a trifle churlish and downright misogynistic – to start calling Australian TV presenter Tracy Grimshaw a pig-faced lesbian.

The row has rumbled on since the weekend, with growing calls for Ramsay to be shipped out of the country in a convict ship, and Australian women’s groups calling for his bollocks to be hung like corks from Germaine Greer’s hat.

And now the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has waded in, describing Ramsay as "a new form of low life" and declaring war on Scotland.

The spat began at a food and wine show in Melbourne when Ramsay shocked the 3,000-strong audience by calling Grimshaw "a lesbian" and showing a photo of a nude woman on all fours, with multiple breasts and a pig's face.

"That's Grimshaw," he leered at the crowd like a bully in a tuck shop. "Holy crap. She needs to see a Botox doctor."

Grimshaw then retaliated on her show on Australia's Nine Network by calling the celebrity cook an "arrogant narcissist" and a "bully".

"I'm not going to pretend that his comments didn't hurt. I was absolutely miserable when I found out," she whined.

"He says it was a joke - well not to me or to anyone who truly cares about me.

"Truly, I wonder how many people would laugh if they were effectively described as 'an old ugly pig'. How is that funny, exactly?"

Grimshaw added: "Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn't find him attractive must be gay. For the record, I don't and I'm not."

She continued her attack in a radio interview, saying his insults upset her and her mother.

She said she did not expect an apology from the TV chef, adding: "I don't want one, I don't care.

"There's nothing more he can do to me now and he can't make it better."

But then Ramsay could not help himself and had another crack at Grimshaw, telling the crowd at the Good Food & Wine Show that he and the TV host had been long-time lovers.

"We were secret lovers for 20 years," he said before dismissing it as a joke. "No, I didn't go there...I didn't stoop that low, for God's sake."

Despite the storm, Ramsay remains unrepentant, saying his comments have been "blown out of context".

Bit like his football career? At least he didn’t mention the cricket.