When the late Anthony Bourdain declared that the even later AJ Liebling’s short volume of reminiscences Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris was “the benchmark for great food writing”, it fuelled a small international frenzy and a procession of reprints. Ever since, wherever crapulent belching windbags foregather, I am asked, “Of course, you have read Liebling? Is he not the sine qua non?”

Well, yes, I have. It’s only 150 pages long. I have flicked through it in enough downstairs loos to have formed a fair impression. And, no, he isn’t.

Maybe it’s because AJ Liebling was a short, Jewish, myopic hack journalist with a sweet turn of phrase but no real vocation, who banged out bits and pieces on whatever he was paid to