Hardeep Singh-Kohli

Growing up in Glasgow I saw the word ‘Paki’ spray-painted on to the metal shutters of corner shops across the city. I was called a Paki. It was whispered, spoken and occasionally shouted, as I was pursued through the streets, running in terror from yobs. Those more attuned with the socio-geographic affairs of the Indian subcontinent would note my turban and be aware, therefore, that I am not Pakistani in origin. Actually, the jibe was all the more hurtful for its inaccuracy. In later years I was grateful for the rise of political correctness and the protection from racist and vicious language it affords. But now even I get the sneaking suspicion that things have gone too far.

Hardeep Singh Kohli lifts the veil on the new ‘underground kitchens’: confidential gatherings of gastronomes in secret locations, meals that are governed by the rules of omerta So there I am, in a stranger’s kitchen on a summer Saturday night, knee-deep in freshly cooked basmati rice, chutneys and pickles a go-go. And I’m ladling spoonfuls of smoked aubergine and pea curry on to the 24th of 25 expectant plates, wondering furiously if: 1) There will be enough to go round. 2) Each portion is roughly equal lest there be a disagreement. 3) The damned curry is still warm enough to taste palatable. I am a maelstrom of madness, an apoplexy of activity. And I must confess I’m not altogether sure why I have brought this upon myself.

Last thursday evening saw me embraced by the ample bosom that is Yorkshire. I had an evening engagement in Sheffield, the oft-overlooked, Judas Priest-inspired steel town of the North. Every village, city and county has its rivalries. Dublin is divided by a river creating a historic division between the northsiders and southsiders; the west coast of Scotland labours under some delusional air of self-importance over the east-coast castle-keepers; and the dichotomy between the red and white roses of Yorkshire and Lancashire couldn’t be more documented in the annals of history. Over dinner I was offered various definitive definitions of a Yorkshireman (bear in mind, there seems no great interest in defining the women of those parts).

On the 30th anniversary of the release of Britain’s best gangster movie, Hardeep Singh Kohli celebrates its eerie prescience ‘I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman with a sense of history... our country is not an island any more...’ Harold Shand; gangster, visionary and entrepreneur. For many, The Long Good Friday is the finest British gangster film ever made. Much as I concur with that recommendation, to describe it as merely a gangster movie is to be excessively reductive. When I first watched The Long Good Friday a couple of decades ago, I too loved it as a gangster movie; a film bristling with brutality, suffocatingly suspenseful and fulfilling all the criteria for excellent storytelling.

By the time you read this I will have turned 40. Forty. Up until a few days ago, 40 was just a number, plain and simple — the sort of number that followed 39 and preceded 41; the sort of number that bands from Birmingham placed after the letters ‘UB’ before recording a few reggae-based songs; the sort of number that was occasionally mentioned on the Shipping Forecast, just before Cromarty, just after Viking and Dogger. My friends had emailed or called with concern, never quite broaching the subject directly, always skirting, dancing around the inevitability of my ageing, the ‘night follows day’ reliability of my mutability. I found myself quoting Wilde, when he suggested that youth was wasted on the young. (I was too wasted when I was young to enjoy my youth.