First pasta post

With Cherie Booth QC spending most of her working days at Number 10, she has little time to visit her old eating haunts in Gray’s Inn.

One of her favourites used to be an Italian restaurant called Charlicks in Gray’s Inn Road. It still attracts the great and the good of the bar – Cherie in fact was introduced to it by members of her former set, 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square.

But it’s not just its excellent fishcakes that Cherie has to thank it for. It was Charlicks’ tagliatelles and pastas that kept her husband going at the height of his election campaign in 1997. And the word is that our dear PM continues to empty Charlicks when the Italian mood takes over.

With the next general election just around the corner, Charlicks may want to install a hotline to Number 10.