The Committee, Past & Present

Buckland Club Chairman: 2016 – Present

Committee Member: From Autumn 1997

Member Since Spring 1997

Occupation: former teacher, publican, microbrewery owner & vintners’ friend.

Most Memorable Dinner: The Futurist Dinner – my first dinner as a Sponsor. Somehow members were accidently persuaded to eat soup with their hands.

Most Bucklandish Dish Consumed: dog stew in North Korea. It would have been wrong to refuse on so many levels.

Last Meal Request: a bottle of red wine from one of the many fabulous vineyards around Panzoult (in the Loire Valley), scene of numerous magical family holidays; plus some bread and local goats’ cheese.

Fantasy Sponsor: Tony Hancock would be hilarious. Pie and mash along with bucket loads of brown ale and vodka.

Fantasy Guest: Bob Carolgyes & Spit The Dog. I once sat at a table with him during a meal at the Birmingham Hippodrome. The evening ended in a riot with Carolgyes leading a singsong that involves everybody dancing around the room.

Unwanted Guest: Jamie Oliver. Pukka, mockney cockney idiot. Telling the nation’s children what to eat – give the kids crisps, turkey twizzlers and blue pop, I say. In fairness, he can cook.

One Cuisine Only: Indian. It has to be. I really don’t think that I would tire of curry …especially for breakfast.

More: insects. I think that this will become pretty commonplace in the years to come. The Buckland Club was a trailblazer when we fed the Archbishop of York locusts at a Biblical Dinner. He was quite unperturbed.

Less: Raki. The only time I recall getting drunk from the legs upwards. The end result resembled Bambi on ice.

Guilty Pleasure: black pudding, pork scratchings or anything else pig related.

Epitaph: He Suffered Fools Gladly.

Buckland Club President: 2016 – Present

Previously Chairman, and before that, Hon. Secretary.

Club member since 1974, encouraged by the peerless Harlan Walker. I have never regretted accepting his invitation to join this quintessentially eccentric gastronomic society.

Years of foreign travel have afforded me the opportunity to follow the example of Frank Buckland (characterised as “The Man Who Ate the Zoo”), tasting anything deemed edible, irrespective of the number of legs. Most things I have enjoyed.

When not thinking about ‘strange eating’, I paint and draw and occasionally play golf (rarely more than four times a week).

My roots are deep in Europe, its languages and culture.

Culinary Highlights: poisonous mushrooms (Gyromitra [Helvella] esculenta) at ‘Sofus’ in Gothenburg; wild trout freshly smoked over olive wood in Lombardy; Raymond Blanc’s essence of tomato soup, served to 200+ at the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery; giant sea urchins, on the Pacific coast of Chile; elvers with scrambled egg, cooked by Harlan for 60+ for a Gloucestershire evening at Highnam Court, sans kitchen; and too many of my wife Nina’s wonderful surprises to list here.

Vinous Delights: too numerous by far. Difficult to equal a very recent experience – the serendipitous combination of fried eggs, bacon and tomato – a light late-night supper – with a superb bottle, randomly chosen from a wine rack in Zona Hardy’s kitchen, of Château Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande, 1982; even better when tasted at breakfast the following morning.

Low Points: there have been a few, generally memorable. The Buckland Club does not always hit high notes. One for the record: the Russian Dinner, sponsored by Prof. Bob Smith who revealed that our first course, mainly Vodka, taken standing with canapés, was intended to disguise the inedibility of what was to follow and he was right.

Buckland Club Deputy Chair: 2016 – Present

Member Since 2003 following an invitation to attend ‘A Dinner for the Day of The Dead’ by Andrew Morris, I have Andrew’s wife  to thank for suggesting I might be interested in this eccentric dining club. It has been a wonderful experience to be part of a dynamic mélange of people with both memorable and challenging dinners.

Committee Member Since 2005.

Professional Background: Registered Dietitian and Hypno-Psychotherapist

Food Interests: Food in Art, Food bank volunteer, cooking for friends

Chefs Followed: Claire Hutchings, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Shepherd,

Sponsored Dinners: A Medicinal menu, Alexis Soyer, Dickens, Elizabeth David, A Foragers menu

Most Challenging Food Eaten: squirrel at ‘Rock and Roll’ Buckland dinner

Most Memorable Meal:  Domm in Vilnius (sadly now closed) with a head chef who trained at El Bulli

Worst Dining Experience: China 1984 when buffets and banquet style dining featured noxious overcooked vegetables.

Favourite Wines: Amarone and most dessert wines

Fantasy Dinner guests: Sigmund Freud, Elizabeth David, Alice B Toklas

To be updated.

Member since sometime after 2013 & committee member since spring 2022.

Occupation: ex teacher, practicing artist, gardener, enthusiastic cook and baker and most importantly full time international margarita tester…. Ok it is self appointed!

Dinners sponsored: German meal in spring 2022. Interestingly asked to be a committee member afterwards due to the incredibly tasty german meal and amazing Brothers Grimm table decorations.

Most memorable Buckland Club meal: my first club meal.  The Gout Dinner with the food, wine and David London’s exceptional port that could cause gout. Fortunately it didn’t give it to me this time.

Culinary highlights: eating at 11 Maddison Square, New York.  A set menu of 15 courses with wine pairing.  The highlight was having a spear of asparagus poached in a pigs bladder over a candle flame. 

Culinary lowlight: deep fried seaweed in Spain

Most Buckland food eaten: barbecued snake that had been run over and collected, not by me, to a BBQ lunch with the British Lions when they were in Australia in the 80s.

Food aspirations: a meal at NOMA in Copenhagen. 

To be updated.

Dinner Minutes Secretary: From Autumn 2018

Member Since Autumn 2009

Career: I started working in the music business in 1978 as a photographer contributing to NME, Sounds, Melody Maker and later The Face, Smash Hits, Record Mirror and many more.

I accidentally started promoting bands and events in 1980 and I haven’t worked out how to stop yet. I’ve promoted thousands of acts including Blur, Pop Will Eat Itself, Oasis, The Cranberries, Radiohead, The Wonder Stuff, as well as comedians – Marcus Brigstock and Reginald D Hunter.

I also enjoyed broadcasting for BRMB (1986 – 1992) and currently have a bi monthly show on Brum Radio.

Gastronomic Influences: as a child growing up in the 1960s I was subjected to many meals that were wonders of the modern age at the time, such as tinned mince, Kraft cheese slices on toast with pickled onion. The rest of my diet consisting entirely of a combination of chips, bacon and beans; chips, sausage and beans; chips bacon and egg; chips sausage and egg; egg and chips and sausage and beans. I can’t begin to convey the excitement I felt upon the release of Pot Noodles. The only culinary relief was a 3 mile walk across fields to my grandmother’s house, accompanied by my faithful and vicious terrier. We would bag a brace of rabbits on the way for the pot, or I’d stop and try to catch eels as a starter.

After leaving home I finally experienced the freedom to explore the culinary world, although realised pretty soon that my curiosity was limited by an inability to cook, so lived on hot dogs, battered sausage and chips and tinned mince pasta for a further six months. This food based disappointment has prepared me perfectly for my membership of The Buckland Club. As Abraham Lincoln once said :

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.