A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

Dominic West is the actor who plays the homicide cop Jimmy McNulty in the HBO series The Wire and if you don’t watch The Wire you are a big, big dummy, as it has to be the best thing on television ever. And if you do? Then you will know this: while one fully appreciates the programme’s epic exploration of urban decay and dark, difficult socio-political themes, when sexy McNulty takes off his shirt and has his way with a lady on the bonnet of some car, wey-hey! Only kidding. It’s the epic exploration of urban decay and dark, difficult socio-political themes that get me every time. You know that, right? Or, as I might say in The Wire-speak: ‘You feel me, yo?’ And as I might also add: ‘You come at the king, you best not miss.’ It makes absolutely no sense here, but I have always yearned to say it.

Anyway, we meet in west London, at the River Café, which he has chosen, because the whole point of this new series is that I do food and celebrities, eventually building up, perhaps, to one day doing food on celebrities — ideally, I would like to eat strawberries off Daniel Craig, or honey — but for the minute it’s Dominic West. Ah, here he comes… and you know what? Now I can see him up close, now I’m not distracted by the urban decay and the dark, difficult socio-political themes, I’m thinking: he’ll do. He’s dark and dishy with a naughty face and is quite naughty, I think. When I later put it to him that I rarely drink during the day because I know not drinking during the day is what saves me from becoming a full-on bag lady, he says, quite mournfully, ‘Oh, you so don’t know what you are missing.’