Evil empire

Opus has written its name in letters six foot high outside, which is such a screaming act of narcissistic self-doubt, I wish I’d thought of it myself. I put this down to Opus being in Birmingham, a city that is stuck in low to medium self-hatred. Its roads are mad, and think they are in Miami, and wander around pointlessly with eight lanes, looking for malls and gun shows and Charlton Heston but then they realise — still Birmingham.

Opus is a ‘smart’ restaurant. I know this because a) it thinks pistachio is a good colour for things other than pistachio nuts, in this case, chairs, and b) Francis Maude is here. He is sitting with Nick Robinson of the BBC, leaning on padded pistachio tubes. I suddenly realise that Francis Maude played the Emperor in Star Wars and wonder if Nick Robinson knows this. Maybe they are in league? Obviously I spend the rest of the evening waiting for Francis Maude to attack Nick Robinson with Sith fire; when I am not doing this, I am online, looking up exactly how much money Maude claimed from the taxpayer to service a mortgage on a London property moments from his other London property. (I’m fun!) If this review seems distracted, this would be why.

It is a large, too-bright room with no atmosphere; anything that could have added atmosphere — candlelight, for instance, or Ewoks, who are really teddies with Menshevik tendencies — has been rooted out. So the effect, I am afraid, is glossy non-entity — clean, safe, dull, and all sitting in a gruesome puddle of pistachio, plus brick red. Pistachio and brick red? Who designed this? A suave baby? It looks like McDonald’s, now McDonald’s has gone ‘posh’.