You Never Know What Might Make A Story

Last week I was anxious that I wasn’t getting out and about enough, but this week a moment from the top of the number 98 bus turned into a feature, so I suppose having one’s eyes open is as valuable as reading emails…

Every week I discuss with our very good and imaginative food columnist Ed Cumming what’s going on ‘the way we eat now’ (also the name of his column). I mentioned that I’d seen a local kebab shop shuttered and mused that the arrival of a branch of German Doner Kebab down the road must be connected.

After looking at a menu for this chain I’d never entered, it felt like a story and so it turned into one, which you can read here.

On reflection and after a comprehensive trawl of my saved emails, I realise now that I never hear from the fast-food chains or quite a number of other fixtures on our high streets and town centres. 

I wonder if it’s because such brands don’t consider press coverage necessary (outside the occasional headline-seeking promotion)? Or because they work with only certain outlets, which don’t include what we used to call broadsheets and glossies?

I’d like to hear from as many different food brands as possible, on the whole, as no one can ever quite tell what’s going to make a story. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred it won’t be a story but you just never know what it sparks in an editor. GDK doing doner spring rolls and doner baguettes… I mean!