Stephen Fry : Food For Thought

Okay. To those who still believe I’m wrong in agreeing with Stephen Fry that men en masse like sex far more than women en masse.

And who still think I’m writing from random illogical personal prejudice (as opposed to my arguments being backed up by everything from the romantic fiction bestseller charts to the statistics on sex crime, the hardcore-porn-DVD mailing lists and the collected works of Charles Darwin.)

Here’s a little question for you.

Meet Person A and Person B.

Person A and Person B both claim to just love the physical act of eating, and to be hopelessly addicted to pig-outs and basic gluttony.

Person A will eat at every available opportunity - anything and everything that presents itself. Ideally nice food of Nando’s standard or higher, but needs must when the devil drives. In a push, when seriously hungry, they’ll even resort to McDonalds double cheeseburgers, donner kebabs of dubious provenance, and pallid soggily-battered cod with chips like little paper bags full of pus.

Ideally, Person A aims for higher culinary things - and spends much of their leisure time poring over lavishly illustrated cookery books showing impossibly beautiful photographs of plumply bronzed and gleaming breasts and thighs.

But in the realistically lifelong absence of this sort of thing, they’re perfectly satisfied – nay very happy - to tuck into an American Hot. So long as it comes with extra black olives. And maybe a bit of garlic bread.

While Person B turns their nose up at any mass-produced food, feels physically sick at the concept of eating from a kebab van, and dismissively turns down the free vouchers from Pizza Hut which get offered to them on a daily basis.

Will happily go months or even years in between pig-outs when Michelin invites are thin on the ground - living on occasional lettuce leaves to prevent actual starvation.

And only ever really enjoys eating when they can get all dressed up for the occasion and eat at the corner table of the Fat Duck.

Now, Person B clearly does not like the simple, physical act of eating to anywhere near the same extent as Person A.

What they like is certainly connected to eating - the three-Michelin-starred restaurant experience, the delicate interplay of fine flavours and freshly sourced ingredients.

But it’s not just ‘eating’ per se.

So if someone comes along and says ‘A and B are both equally fond of eating, and anyone who says otherwise is a blinkered liar. And I know what I’m talking about, because I saw Person B really enjoying the pan-fried muskrat with rosemary and caviar jus in Nobu five months ago.’

Then I’m going to tell that person they’re full of shit.

Person B may well be a greater gourmet, with a superior appreciation of fine ingredients and their magical infinity of combinations, and a keener, subtler, more educated culinary palate.

And Person B may well get greater, richer, more complex sensual delight from their occasional finely chosen mouthful than Person A’s mindless gluttony will ever provide.

But if the question is simply ‘who likes eating more’ - there’s no comparison whatsoever.

I could make the same point with the question ‘who likes boozing more?’ Someone who ravenously downs four litres of anything they can get their mitts on on a nightly basis, up to and including aftershave? Or someone who relishes a few glasses of glorious vintage Margaux on special occasions and Christmasses, and turns their nose up at anything that hasn’t been gathering dust in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wine cellar for the last twenty years?

But I’m hoping that my message has been understood and received.

For as long as the question is simply ‘who likes sex more’ - not ‘who genuinely appreciates good sex more,’ or ‘who is capable of taking greater sensual pleasure in the exquisite delights and nuances of the act at its finest’ - the answer is, uncategorically, ‘men.’

The argument ends here.

Bite me.

J x