Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

battered and bruised, conceded the unequal struggle. He decided to get his own back and hit them in the pocket where it hurt.
    Over the next few weeks he completely booked the restaurant out several times with false bookings, taking enormous pleasure in adopting different accents, making elaborate bookings for fictitious peers of the realm; taking tables for business functions; booking a party of twelve for his wife's birthday (complete with personalised cake); ordering special menus for overseas visitors; making bookings with intricate details and additions. He would only stop when the restaurant refused a booking saying: 'Sorry, Sir, there are no tables available: we are completely full tonight.'
    Surprisingly, the restaurant is still going twenty years on, and both parties are the best of friends.
     

     
    'I was very interested in a famous and very powerful man but, stupidly, went and introduced him to a well-known widow. Mistake. The next thing I knew they had arranged lunch together at Mosimans. I know the people there very well and worked out the couple's timings -they would be arriving at one-ish, have an aperitif, and by around 1.45 p.m. they would be mellow and relaxed...
    I arranged for a single white rose to be delivered at that time, with a note that read: "Why play the fiddle when you can have a Stradivarius?" A couple of friends were positioned in the restaurant at tables nearby to witness the scene and testified that her face fell a mile and he went bright red. It achieved its objective: she never talked to me again. But he did. Definitely!'
    - with many thanks to writer Mona Bauwens.
     

     
    'A new and dazzling Soho brasserie opened in the early Eighties and a friend of mine suggested we eat there. So it was that, one hot summer's day, we found ourselves sitting by the window enjoying a pre-prandial drink, waiting for a roast beef salad. It duly arrived, looking very beautiful with its fashionable, designer leaves and, without further ado, we dug in. Simon speared a tomato and was just about to pop it in his mouth when he stopped and turned deathly pale. He was trembling - I truly thought he was having a heart attack. Indicating his plate he revealed the source of his pallor: a huge black spider was residing in his lunch. It turned my stomach too - you don't expect to find arachnids in your entrées.
    'As the seconds passed I began to have doubts - it

     
    really was improbably large. Closer scrutiny revealed that it was, in fact, plastic. We called the restaurant manager and asked him to explain matters and he assumed it was our little joke. We assured him that we had not put it there ourselves - and how could we possibly fake the colour of poor Simon's face? He disappeared to investigate.
    'A quarter of an hour later he reappeared with a trembling sous-chef who admitted the whole thing. He had chosen the recipient at random. The stress and strain of a top London kitchen and the demands of the punters had got to him and he had popped under the pressure. He had bought the spider a few days previously, carried it around in his pocket, and just couldn't resist the temptation any longer - this was chef's revenge. How was he to know that it would land up on the table of the restaurant critic for Harpers and Queen?’
    - with thanks to TV personality and restaurant critic, Loyd Grossman.
     

     
    The two girls who were engaged to the same man discovered each other's existence simultaneously. Rather than punishing each other, they decided to be thoroughly grown-up and controlled about it all and direct their revenge at him. The blonde telephone him: 'Darling,' she said, 'let's have a romantic lunch, just the two of us. See you at The Buck's Club at one.'
    They made sure they arrived at the club after him. He was sitting at the table when they walked in together, dressed to the nines and both looking fantastic. Each picked up a different dish from the buffet, emptied it on his head, and calmly walked out again.
     

Photographie Evidence
     

     
    'Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.'
    Phyllis Diller
     

Photographie Evidence
     
    In Italy, a hot-blooded lover was so distraught when his girlfriend said she was going back to her husband, that he had giant photographs printed of her in the nude. Then he plastered them over the entrance hall of her flat -and on the roof of her husband's car.
     

     
    A furious Frenchman took his revenge on his ex-girlfriend by advertising her in kinky contacts