There
was a most unusual item up for auction: a menu. Yes, an airline menu,
that of the breakfast of Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of
Britain, which he took on his last official travel to the United States,
in June 1954. The experts reckoned it could fetch €1,700.
The trip was made in a plane of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation). When his breakfast menu was brought, as it didn't please him, he turned the card over and wrote down at the back what he would like to be served, in 2 trays. '1st tray: Poached eggs, toasts, butter, marmalade, coffee with milk, a jug of cold milk, cold chicken or meat. 2nd tray: Grapefruit, bowl of sugar, a glass of orange juice (with ice), Whisky, Soda.' After this list, he added: 'Wash your hands, a cigar.'
The auction house told the 'Daily Telegraph': "The paper shows what abundance of food he required and how he washed down everything with Whisky, and after all that, smoked a cigar. It's so wonderful to eat so well at the age of 80."
Lots of things have changed since. The BOAC disappeared in 1974, when merged with BEA (British European Airways) to form the present day British Airways. Although still exists, I don't know whether in the Churchill planes one can smoke a cigar after breakfast. Perhaps yes. I doubt any airlines could impede the man who, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, was capable of confronting the King trying to prohibit him taking alcohol for religious reasons. It's the advantage of being the prime minister travelling in private planes, or at least they did till having a 'correct' public image became so important that none of the politicians today want the media to report them and so interfere with their popularity in elections.
There's a sage saying: 'Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a beggar.' Somehow I imagine Churchill would have imposed his own ideas on that too.
Current Mood: 
Amused
Amused
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