GILES COREN | NOTEBOOK
Here’s a tip — stop whinging and get your wallets out
The Times
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Narrated by Giles Coren
Why is the British dining public so obsessed with the subject of tipping? There is simply no clickbait like it. The leaving of a big restaurant tip by Rod Stewart the other day, and a general northwards creep of the standard 12.5 per cent service charge towards 13, 14 and even, in some London clip joints, 15 per cent, has led to a slew of news stories around the subject, each of which is greeted with hundreds, even thousands, of below-the-line comments from tight-fisted whingers furiously defending their right not to hand over a single penny more than the menu-stated bottom line for each dish.
Sure, the debate is cloaked in all sorts of fig-leaf banter around whether or not a service charge should be
