I like this video of Marco Pierre White, the super chef. He comes across as an arrogant f*cker, which I hate; but he also comes across as someone with gravitas, which I like.
When you’re someone like me, who tends to think life is like a Samuel Beckett play – empty, flat etc. it’s always nice when it feels like it has significance and meaning. The way Marco Pierre White is (and I feel I have to write his name out fully every time, like a title, which is all part of it) gives it significance and meaning.
I don’t know quite what it is, I mean, I know he’s not solving any existential things really, but at the same time, I sort of feel that he is.
Whether it’s his Knorr promotional tutorial videos or interviews like this one, he comes across this way and I think it’s good. I don’t think I could pull it off, and I don’t think I’d want to. No, that would be ridiculous. But I like it on him. He wears it well. There’s also a video of him doing a talk at the Oxford Union, which is even more ridiculous and arrogant – there’s a bit where he gives dramatic raps on the table to illustrate his knocking on the door of some grand chef when he was a boy – but again, with that absurd performance is a gravitas, a sense of things actually mattering and life not being a void.
I think when you believe in something, believe in yourself, like he does, it imbues everything with a significance. When you don’t believe in anything, and talk in a way that reflects that, you don’t imbue anything with meaning and things continue to feel empty.
…if you catch me strutting around the place and posturing dramatically, you’ll know why!