Sea Trout.

I’m back to my days with Mars Ltd. It was the last day of the sales training course, and the chief instructor was treating the trainees to a slap-up dinner in a small but fairly exclusive restaurant in Maidenhead.

Half way through the meal, a young waiter approached the table next to ours. He looked inexperienced and nervous, and he looked foreign – Italian, I judged. He was carrying a large silver platter with a domed lid.

When he arrived at the table he stood to attention, removed the lid, and proudly exclaimed:

‘Sea trout!’

Unfortunately, his accent was a little thick and it didn’t sound like ‘sea trout.’

The chief instructor, a late middle aged Lancastrian with a typical taste for plain speaking and ‘basic’ humour, leant across the table to us and said:

‘Did ee just say shit ’ot?’

The people on the receiving table heard him and began to giggle. The people on the table the other side heard him, too, and they began to giggle. The restaurant was, as I said, a small one and the question was repeated from table to table remarkably quickly. Within a very short time, the whole restaurant was giggling.

The poor young waiter looked bemused. He was clearly at a loss to know why everybody was suddenly laughing, but his face betrayed the suspicion that it had something to do with him.