The ‘Orchid’ Pan Asian restaurant recently opened its doors in the Cambrian building, opposite the pier on Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth. Whilst the day was grey and miserable, the Orchid fare provided the very opposite.

With three courses at a smidgen under £7, I wallowed in the heady, rich and perfumed aroma of chicken Satay, followed by the most exquisite Thai green chicken curry and a side order of Pad Thai Jey (Stir fried Thai rice noodles with sweet pad Thai sauce, green beans, baby sweetcorn & lime juice). There were only two other guests, but that didn’t deter the waitress from delivering an honest warmth to match the food. I must say that, despite visiting mid week, I was delighted to find there was no compromise on ingredients, with my curry heavy with fresh and exotic components to excite my taste buds.

I was disappointed that one thing not being delivered by the Orchid was its much advertised promise of an ‘all you can eat buffet’. The buffet is billed as available every day from 12-4, but it was not on offer when I visited, and I’ve heard the same from others. I have to say, the food was faultless, and far superior to what one might expect for the price elsewhere. But if they advertise ‘all you can eat’ they should deliver that promise or pull the adverts. I would prefer the latter, as (aside from my own high cholesterol!) the Orchid should build its reputation for quality, not quantity, simply because quality is clearly what the Orchid does best.

New restaurants opening in the winter in (relatively) quite seaside towns don’t always have the best life expectancy, even in less economically tough climates. Let’s hope then that the Orchid not only makes it through its seedling phase, but grows to be a wonderful and vibrant bloom for Aberystwyth. I , for one, would swear I could already smell the bouquet…

www.orchidaberystwyth.co.uk

On ‘James May’s Man Lab’:

…If ‘Man Lab’ is the answer to restoring the inventive scientific, cultural, and artistic genius of a lost generation of British men, we may as well all switch on our badly wired televisions and watch Gok Wan’s Fashion Fix

On Ofcom’s ruling on Vinnie Jones’ ill judged use of the word ‘retard’:

…But come on now, if you are going to sit down and watch a programme like Celebrity Big-Brother, you are literallysanctioning the act of banging together people of limited vocabulary, to see what amusing noises they make. And if you don't expect the odd slip up like retarded/retard, then you, my friend, are retarded. But not a retard, that's different - See above and pay attention.

On ‘Harry Brown’:

...Despite what I appear to be saying to you, I urge you to watch Harry Brown. Not for the acting (Michael Caine has got progressively better in his dotage, and this is no exception). Not for the plot. But because Harry Brown is nearer documentary than movie. And it has something important to tell you.

On ‘America’s Got Talent’:

...I mean, do you actually think people can't juggle in Indonesia? Do you think there are no hot dance groups in Paraguay? Well there are. The WORLD'S got talent.

If you hot foot it to North Korea right this minute, no doubt there're people watching an excellent routine involving a woman with a hot stick and a Labrador retriever…

Anything You Can Do... Movie Script Edits

Armchair movie buffs everywhere will, as I write this, be watching some naff Sunday afternoon TV movie thinking ‘I could do better than that’.

In the spirit of which, I thought I’d have a go at re-writing some well known movie lines…

"I'm just a girl, standing in front of a guy, asking him to go screw himself"
Julia Roberts in Notting Hill

"I'll be back. As a shit politician, but I'll be back"
Arnie in The Terminator

"You're not the man I knew ten years ago." "It's not the years, honey, it's the marriage to Calista Flockhart"
Marion and Indi in Raiders of the Lost Ark

'Nobody puts little Jack Horner in the corner'
Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing

'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, they had to foreclose on mine'
Bogart in Casablanca

'Get you're stinking paws off me, you damned dirty MP for Falkirk'
Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes (’68)

'You had me at twenty percent pay rise'
Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire

'If you build it, some arsehole will complain to the planning dept.'
Field of Dreams

There’ll be more to follow, I’m sure, but you can send me your suggestions via FB or Twitter.

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On ‘Masterchef 2011’:

…I've given up on the now quite ludicrous X Factor, why the BBC think it's a good idea to turn Masterchef into the X Factor, I don't know. I anticipate sob stories from contestants tonight, along with another bucket of mock peril and, no doubt, John and Gregg will gather together some of the failed contestants and form their own kitchen based boy band.

On ‘Monte Carlo or Bust’:

…Like I said, most of LIFE is pointless. There’s no point denying it, you might laugh at a bloke in a shed spending half his life building a matchstick model of the Titanic, but what’s the point of YOUR day eh? Particularly the bits you spend asleep, ogling the telly, hanging around for hours in stationary traffic, or watching 22 blokes kick something around a field for an hour and a half. What’s the POINT? See, I told you.

On Sit-coms:

Well I’m here to tell those same executives that classic sitcoms arenotdead, as much as they have tried to starve them out of existence.

There’s little hope for Todd Margaret, whose wasted limbs will be buried in a tangle of countless similar shows, deep in the graveyard of TV comedy failure. But Miranda has shown us that classic sitcom still has a pulse, and if they would just breathe a bit of life back into it, and start to provide it with four square meals of writing talent, we can all get on with the business of enjoying a good laugh, and taking a well deserved break from our crappy lives.

Except you maybe, if you don’t deserve it.

On ‘The Rob Brydon Show’:

…His 'headline' guest was David Walliams…All he ever does is insinuate his (clearly untrue) bisexuality, like an embarrassing uncle trying to do a Julian Clary impression over Christmas dinner…

…Unless Brydon's producers do something pretty damn drastic and pretty damn soon, this one's going the way of Davina.

On ‘The X-Factor’:

...and I’m blissfully happy to enjoy music, ignorant of the knowledge that, in order to deliver to my lug holes a Nina Simone or Rebecca Ferguson album, someone in a soundproofed room has gone to the effort of sifting through the Wagners, Wand Erections, Belle Amies and the unending abundance of uninteresting, uninspiring, dirt-dull and forgetful subsoil that constantly surfaces, quickly throwing it back into the deep hole from where it came.

On Television:

…As for Alan Sugar? Maybe take The Crystal Maze’s Richard O’Brien, mixed with a little bit of Paxman’s University Challengeattitude. Then lose the O’Brien. And the Paxman. And add a lorry load of self-aggrandizing arrogance built entirely on the ‘admirable skill’ of shifting millions of shit electrical stuff to gullible plebs in the eighties.

…I certainly don’t care about the cast of Single Father (BBC1; 9pm) a programme so piss poorly plotted and edited that I wish I had a Tardis so I could go back to the point David tenant signed the contract and nick his biro).