I think conversation is the primary reason for going to pubs, apart from the drink of course, so I don’t like anywhere that’s too loud.2 Colony Room Club 41 Dean Street, London W1 (tel: 020 7437 9179)My mum always lived in Soho and this is another of the bohemian haunts she used to take me to. It’s a private member’s club that was started by a lady called Muriel in the Fifties, who then passed it on to a man called Ian Board, who in turn handed it over to Michael, who runs it now, and it hasn’t changed a bit. Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and George Melly all used to drink here. It’s painted green and filled with millions of artefacts, which make it a really groovy, funky place.3 Mango Room 10 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 (tel: 020 7482 5065)It seems I’ve spent most of my life in bars and pubs so it’s very hard to choose between them. But I have to mention the Mango Room as it is a part of the whole Madness thing. It serves great West Indian food and has an adjoining bar and the owners are lovely people.

I’ve spent numerous memorable evenings here dancing in the kitchen with Linton the chef and Derek the owner, and playing the pots and pans. Nowdays, though, I tend to go there for a last drink on the way home as I’ll always meet someone I know.4 Old Neptune Marine Terrace, Whitstable, Kent (tel: 01227 272262)I spend a lot of time in Whitstable as my wife’s family come from there. It has a lot of great pubs, but the Neptune really stands out due to its incredible setting right on the beach like a freestanding castle In fact, it’s a white clapboard local pub. I think it’s important to get your drinks right for the location, so here I’ll drink the local ale which is one of the oldest brews in the country.

I love to pop in on a Friday afternoon having just got off the train and have my first pint of the weekend.5 George Hotel Inverary, Scotland (tel: 01499 302111)I stumbled on the George one holiday when I drove the family mad dragging them everywhere tracing my McPherson roots – there’s an area near Aviemore with lots of family connections. It’s set on a huge loch with water so deep it looks black and framed by charcoal blue mountains and looks like a mock Venetian folly. I had a fabulous night there talking to Frank Clark, a genealogist, who charges Americans £500 to chart their family tree. I’ve been back since on the pretext of doing a documentary about the MacPhersons for Channel 4, but I never made it out of the George It’s that kind of place.. Sun, sea, sand, sex and sangria: that was the siren call that first drew British package holiday tourists to Spain some 40 years ago – the Balearics especially, and Ibiza and Majorca in particular Not a word about the region’s traditional cuisine.

Sun, sea, sand, sex and sangria: that was the siren call that first drew British package holiday tourists to Spain some 40 years ago – the Balearics especially, and Ibiza and Majorca in particular. Not a word about the region’s traditional cuisine.
Few of Majorca’s four million annual visitors are even aware of the island’s long tradition of indigenous cooking. They are, for the most part, quite satisfied to consume fish ‘n’ chips, burgers, steak, pizza and pasta – hardly local dishes. They’ll try the ensaimada, perhaps, a deliciously sweet, coiled yeasty bun that is the local equivalent of a croissant. But they remain obstinately ignorant of Majorca’s other delicacies.It’s not that the island’s cooking is a well-kept secret, it’s simply that British holidaymakers are terrified of trying anything new, according to native-born Tomas Graves.Tomas, 47, has decided to put this to rights. He has written a book called Bread and Oil (Pa amb Oli) which is published here next month in an attempt to reclaim Majorca’s cultural identity.

Translated from Catalan (closely related to Mallorquin, Graves’s first language), it explores local traditions – the cooks and the restaurants, the bakers and sausage-makers, wine-growers – and the provenance of its produce – flour and bread, olives and olive oil, and the sensational vegetables and fruits. It’s not a recipe book exactly, more a chunk of foodie culture, and a work of some scholarship. Reading it feels like stumbling upon a nugget of gold among the empty lager cans on Magaluf beach.Tomas is the youngest son of the island’s most famous resident, poet and classicist Robert Graves (I, Claudius, Goodbye to All That, The White Goddess). He would prefer to play down his paternity, but that’s impossible given that he lives in Deya, the village on the rugged north coast that Graves made his own. It has been the secret hideaway of poets and painters for half a century. No longer: Richard Branson owns the top hotel here, La Residencia, and renowned PR Lynne Franks (as satirised in Absolutely Fabulous) has a home here.A graphic designer, printer and musician, Tomas, with his brother Juan, runs a well-known local band called, appropriately, Pamboli. His book, he says, is “a portrait of the island disguised as a food book” (its subtitle is Majorcan Culture’s Last Stand).When Majorcans, imprisoned by Franco during the civil war, went on hunger strike to protest against conditions, their chant went: volem pa amb oli (we want bread and oil).