Sid, the bar’s chef, may have had a vivid imagination and enjoyed word play but his style of cooking was not quite what we were looking, or hoping for. Deciding to take a short holiday, he left us to cope alone with the kitchen.

Claudette had made a name for herself in the infamous world of estate agency and was respected for her hard work and ability to generate sales. She enjoyed her job, especially as it gave her the opportunity to see behind the customary closed doors of those multi-million pound houses.

Claudette has other assets though, for as well as being able to keep books, clear crowds and frighten dockers, but she was and still is, a very good cook.

So while the chef was absent she took it upon herself to do the cooking. It was then that we discovered that we, or rather Claudette, could do it as well as, if not better than, the chef.

After her day’s work, showing millionaires around the mansions of London, she would come home, strip off her power dressing and get into the kitchen.

It was here I would find her in the early morning, after I had closed the Bar, hovering over a stew or boning a chicken or preparing a soup.

Occasionally she wore a huge pair of goggles to prevent the juices from garlic, chili peppers and especially onions from lashing out and stinging her eyes. In fact that was the only way I remember during those first few months, looking a bit like a large red-haired, fly.

But the food she produced stunned the clients, bringing them back, begging for more. The good word spread and we decided she should take over the cooking and releave Sid of the job.

When the chef returned from his holiday we visited him. He called his place Chez Louis, which, of course, was a play on the French chez lui, or His Place, but as was always Sid to me I could never work this out.

Sid’s place was a mess. The main room was like a dirty bath. It actually had a tide mark around it.

Claudette and I sat, choosing as undirty a sitting potential as possible and I explained what had happened in the kitchen since he’d gone on holiday and how due to Claudette’s cooking turnover had gone through the roof and that the additional income meant we could pay the mortgage, the borrowings from the bank and repay Claudette’s mother’s loan too.

I ended by giving him my thanks and suggesting he might like to try his hand cooking somewhere else.

Without a word he got up and walked out of the room. We heard him in his kitchen making a terrible noise. I suddenly had an awful premonition.

“Oh my God, Claudette, I don’t think he’s taken this very well. I think he’s gone for a knife!”

I tried moving behind her. She was good at these things, protecting me I mean, but this time she would not budge.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Joe,” she ordered, “and do sit up.”

Sid came back into the room though not with a knife. No, not at all for he carried a well-chilled bottle of champagne.

We thought it very generous of him to share such an expensive luxury item with us considering the bad news we brought him, but then he said he was quite used to being sacked.

Generously he popped the cork and filled our glasses.

It was then that I recognized the champagne to be of good quality and very similar to the one we stocked and which I knew to be only available to the trade.

Sid was such a good, though dirty living, fellow, it was hard to say goodbye.

C 2010 J Hepworth SnorBan UK Ltd