John Gibson: Times are really tough for Ramsden

NOT “done for” yet but, yes, we’ve got David Ramsden freely admitting he is feeling the pinch.

He’s not alone in these cruel economic times. Only a quarter of his Dogs empire left in Hanover Street (he’d branched out to Rose Street), he tells me and after what’s been a “long and tortuous haul” these past five years they’ve all gone . . Seadogs, Amore Dogs, Underdogs.

“To have come all this way, it’s sad. People will say each unit opened to considerable acclaim, then levelled off. I’m resilient, allegedly. Well, either I’m either resilient or stupid. I don’t know which.

“I’ve been here before.”

He agrees Rogue, his place in Morrison Street, was a “misadventure”. We’ve not heard the last of Ramsden the restaurateur. Nor have we seen the last of his three dogs – two Ibizan hounds and a sloughi. Who’s barking?

Reign check

Can’t recall where I read it. Could have been in Vanity Fair, could have been AA Gill, exercising his wondrous vocabulary. It’s coming back to me now. It was in my dentist’s waiting room.

Anyway, the first bride to popularise white wedding dresses was Queen Victoria. “A tiny, round, plain girl,” Gill opines, “with a nose like a claw hammer and less chin than a terrapin. Charitably, the best thing you could say for her on her wedding day was that she looked like an ornamental toilet-tissue cover.’’