It is very easy to make fun of Bill Granger (I not even going to start, but have a go yourself. See? So easy.) and it is very easy to be jealous of his coastal Australian existence that brims with fresh fruit and and fountains of ricotta and very tiny children in twee dresses. And I don't have a problem with him really. His recipes somehow do manage to look pretty good, come together quite quickly and retain nutritional value. So way to go. That's not the easiest thing to do. Nice job, Bill.
This is what gets me; his restaurant is called bills. That's right. No capital letter and no apostrophe.
Here's how the New York Times explained it:
"Mr. Granger would rather you called Bill's bills. A onetime art student, he dislikes the look of the capital B and the apostrophe in the more conventional spelling, so he does not use them."
My goat is resoundingly got. So he decided to perhaps try and be a little self-effacing and casual in naming his restaurant and ended up reminding us only of the most hated kind of mail and the most depressing point of any restaurant trip while simultaneously forcing us to question his grasp of rudimentary grammar. This has fuck all to do with being an art student. Don't start the sentence about his stupid language ideas with a clause about his art school days. (They aren't alone. Every single article about him has to address this ridiculous conceit and many of them make this art school/apostrophe allergy link.)
Anyway, on Saturday morning, as I was quietly being a former art student and stringing many yards of beads and pearls and forming complete and grammatically accurate sentences in my head, I noticed that the little promo for the upcoming show on BBC 1 said:
Bill's Food.
That's right. The BBC staff just couldn't take the irritating real title of his show - bills food - and decided to correct it. The BBC staff are my new best friends.
Of course this post was secretly dedicated to you...
Posted by: katie | February 12, 2008 at 10:14 AM
You will not be surprised to hear how much I loved this little rant.
Posted by: RiRi | February 12, 2008 at 12:31 AM