King Midas starved to death.

The Salt Bae thing feels like a tipping point in this rotten culture. While food banks are so normalised in society that they're used as a character note for John Bishop in Doctor Who, people are going to a restaurant chain and paying thousands of pounds for a steak wrapped in gold leaf. If you're lucky, and for extra kudos, it might be prepared by a man in a vest and sunglasses, famous for sprinkling salt down his arms.

I like restaurants and, generally, the fancier they are the better I like 'em. I thrill to expert people trained to cook meals I couldn't even imagine. I enjoy the ritual of a server with a thick foreign accent explaining what each course is, and I like the rock 'n' rollness I feel being there, as I am a scumbag and should never have been allowed on the premises. It's the feeling I get at the theatre after-party: I am rough and alien, like Nod from Superman 2. Come at me, in my bin-bag S&M gear*. On the rare occasions I have money, I like to go to a restaurant. I might even get a cab home. Maybe I'll choose the third cheapest wine on the list. 

But it has to be good. It has to be fancy, sexy on the plate and, I can't stress this enough, it has to taste amazing. Cause that's why I'm there - to eat exquisite food. A restaurant is still a rare treat for me. I'm not popping in twice a week on business expenses. It's an occasional, freakish event: an anniversary dinner perhaps, or someone has actually paid me for something. I don't photograph my dinner, I don't @ the restaurant. I go and I eat and I enjoy the moment. Because I'm from the past and I'm not on Instagram. 

But you all are. And you're all out there, filming the gig instead of watching the gig, photographing and filtering your souffle while it sags and collapses. Salt Bae seems like an end point for a decadent society, just like the election of Donald Trump and the Kardashian's brand saturation seemed to be. I'm sure Trump has dined at Salt Bae  - how could he resist the allure of a golden burger? How could he turn down the vulgar display? That's his gig! The beef itself might lodge itself in his septuagenarian colon, but what else is there for him now except to go out like Elvis: puce faced and blue lipped on a solid gold toilet. 

It's the faux outrage of the newspaper articles that galls. These wealthy arseholes humble-bragging in the press: "Oh no, I accidentally spent £37,000 on a meal!" That's more than the average yearly wage in the UK. And they spunk it on a bit of sirloin dressed as Martin Fry and several bottles of Petrus (yeah, it must have come as a surprise that the world's most expensive wine was expensive). The very fact of having a SPARE £37, 000 is obscene. £37, 000 you won't miss, £37, 000 as pocket change, as a way of getting cheap publicity. Reality star Gemma Collins ranked the experience ten out of ten. Of course she did. 

People say Salt Bae is clever. He's having the last laugh. He's lampooning these idiots and charging them for the privilege. He was an apprentice butcher, whose first restaurant "caught the eye of Turkish billionaire Fehrit Sahenk" and soon he had restaurants all over the middle-east. He then shot to further fame when Bruno Mars tweeted a screen grab of him doing his signature salt sprinkle, and it garnered 2.4 million views overnight. What a strangely zeitgeisty story this is. Do people still say zeitgeist? 

So, he's a working class boy made good, and he's shilling those wealthy rubes. That's good isn't it? Nah, fuck him. Not exactly Robin Hood, is he? He pays his sous chefs an hourly rate that would cover a side of mash potato in his restaurants. What a fucking prince. Selling bad food to idiots who think its great and can easily afford it doesn't humiliate them - they like it. Its win win until Salt Bae falls out of favour and the idiot swarm moves on, locusts who tip. 

Salt Bae has 39 million Instagram followers. He is a man with a pony tail who serves bad food wrapped up like Goldfinger's Spud-U-Like. This is where we are. This is who we are. We're laughing at the circus clowns while the big top's on fire. We're choking on Willy Wonka's magic ticket. A gold steak - the ultimate gilty pleasure. 

*this may explain the longevity of my theatrical career.