Hold, please 2: Favourite fag

It’s 2.14 pm on another Tuesday. The Boss is sprawled on his office bed. He’s aiming smoke rings at the water-stained ceiling and shooting the shit with office legend Bobby ‘El Stoner’ Matthews.

Tapping an inch of ash into the Sports Direct mug balanced on his twenty-pints-a-week paunch, he asks: “Do you know what my favourite fag used to be?”

“The first in the morning?”

“Nah. Not quite. I used to like taking my bird out to a real fancy restaurant. I’m talking a proper five-star kind of place. You know? The type of joint where the waiter’s gonna be fuming he’s serving a man like me. A man who can’t read the French on the menu but knows he wants a big fat steak anyway.”

“Always the steak?”

“Fuck yes! You think I’m shelling out thirty sheets for a plate of pasta? It’s pasta! How good’s it gonna be?”

“You've obviously never been to Sicily. I’ve tasted pasta so fresh the sauce seems like a nuisance.”

“Alright, queer. Where was I? Oh yeah. I’d polish off the steak, mop up the rest of the peppercorn sauce with my thumb and reach for my Pall Malls. You know Pall Malls, right? Cheap, nasty things. Dry as a pint with a Tory. I fucking love ‘em.

“Anyway, I’d wait for some floppy haired servant boy to take my plate away and then I’d spark one of them bad boys up. I’d take a long pull and lean back in my chair. I’d smoke and watch the mistresses nibble on their crab salads. Smoke and think about how fucking far I’d come. Then one day some prick in Westminster told me I’m not allowed to do that anymore.”

“That’s annoying.”

“It is. I ain't been to a restaurant since 2007.”