Five stars Hip to be square ; Four stars Good square meal ; Three stars Fair and square ; Two stars Albert Square ; One star Square peg in round hole There is an old school printing lag between what I assert and what you are hearing. Who can say what may have occurred? The close (or past tense) collapse of capitalism as we understand it fills me with a naughty, giggling joy. I know it's mad, but I can not help it.

I've just been asked to do a speech for after-dinner a global finance establishment. I'm asked to do after-dinner talking rather a lot. God knows why few folk who've really heard me talk after dinner would pay to listen to it again. There's a shadowy nether sector of entertainers who come out with the coffee and mints and do turns like medieval fools for top table. Obsolete comedians ; presenters of axed TV programs ; cricketers with dodgy groins and remaindered memoirs ; a little, excitable herd of comic professional panelists ; guys who have dragged their misanthropy, annoyance and absence of self-worth to the poles, up mountains and through swamps ; folk who, through ugly chance, have been kidnapped by the theologically challenged or lost multiple limbs to alligators or drugs ; women whose faces, boobs, grins and hair are false, and who've stand in writers ; inspiring self-advertisers who talk and point at the very same time ; old, gray men worn smooth by the repetitiveness of one experience, one joke ; golfers ; and, I suspect, occasional writers, will all turn up to speak at the yearly get-togethers of service industries that are neither hardworking nor supply a service.

I can horrify myself imagining what it might really be like putting on the oily, kippered dinner jacket with the pits smelling of muck sweat, setting the satnav, trundling up the highway in the evening gloom, pulling in to the Tudorbethan golfing spa hotel, and the hint of years of budget fine dining, barf and background smell balls. Being met by Helen from Communications and brought to the tiny room with the 5 bottles of water. And then the dining room and ninety mins of little talk, like poking an ulcer with a vinegared Q-tip. How does one think that stuff up? Then the facetious introduction. Well, we guaranteed you a person who wishes no introduction, however unfortunately, Jeremy Clarkson could not make it. Though not content with 2nd best, we threw in the towel. And here, instead, is the thinking mans Denis Norden, the Colin Montgomerie of invective, a person who is to eateries what a suppository is to a constipated air con fitter : after he gets stuck in, the shit hits the fan. Thanks to Trev in the warehouse for that one. Anyhow, enough from me, here he's to chat about something, the sole and one AA Gill.

The statistic which has struck me most lately was a generation back, the CEO of a standard company earned 9 times the wage of his employees. Today, he'd expect that to be a hundred times. It appears only fair, if fair is not a word that is lost all meaning, that they should have to leap from one hundred floors higher up than the remainder of us. The Square is a room that you could think was dancing on the fringe of a dour future. At any dinner time, it's packed with bespoke plutocrats and the minions of Mammon. I haven't been here for a couple of years, but I'd been preparing to come and rereview, to find out how it's getting on on a diet composed of sclerotic cash. I took the editor. We lunch together every year, to give him an opportunity to fire me, so I select the eateries with care.

After I had a little bit of steamed turbot with rambling salt-swept sea kale, and a pudding of pretty pink forced rhubarb from the brick sheds of Yorkshire. Such a unusual treat for the Victorians, and it is today for those whose palettes are not made alligator thick by money, lies and gluttony. It isn't inexpensive here : 3 courses from the la carte are £65. There is a tasting menu that, if you include the wines, comes to £140. But potentially the greatest value in London is the set lunch for £25. The cook here is Phil Howard, and for my money and, in fact for yours, he is one of the 3 or 4 best working in the country. The Square was good, but it is got better.