Which Fork?

Someone at a dinner table pointed their knife straight up in the air like they were about to knight a Yorkshire pudding — and that was the final straw. This week: the great cutlery confusion (outside in, people, it's not complicated), the correct way to park your knife and fork between mouthfuls (there are two positions, it's basically Morse code), and the napkin that got used to clean someone's phone screen at an actual wedding.

Plus: a fond, slightly tragic look back at the days when John Lewis had silver service — an actual man in a waistcoat, spooning your carrots for you, next to the escalators — versus now, where the height of dining formality is unloading your own plate off a robot. And finally, the show draws a hard line on afternoon tea versus high tea, because they are not the same thing, whatever the hotel website tells you.

Full episodes every week. If this one landed, rate it, review it, and send it to whoever in your life still points a knife at the ceiling mid-sentence. Got a rant of your own? Leave us a voice message at speakpipe.com/amioutoftouch.

Transcript

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Am I out of touch? Is the world weird or is it just me? Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to Am I Out of Touch? The show where I sit down for a nice meal and somehow end up furious about cutlery. I'm Alison, your host, and today's theme is Table Manners, the quiet, unspoken rules of eating like a civilised person and how they appear to have been deleted from the national memory. Number one, the great cutlery confusion, not knowing which knife is which, not knowing what a napkin is, knives pointed at the ceiling like a flare gun, and don't even get me started on where your cutlery goes when you're finished. Number two, John Lewis, silver service, and the generally baffling fact that a department store used to serve you afternoon tea with actual white gloves on. And number three, the slow death of afternoon tea and high tea, as concepts anyone under 30 can correctly define. Let's tuck in. Right, cutlery. Let's start here because this is the one that's been quietly bothering me for years, and I finally decided to make it everyone else's problem too. There used to be, and I promise you, this is not just me being posh, I grew up on beans on toast, same as everyone else. There used to be a basic universal understanding of a table setting. Cutlery goes outside in, you start on the outside, you work your way in as the courses arrive, and by time the pudding fork turns up, you know you're nearly done. It's not complicated, it's not silver service, it's just the order things happening. Same as knowing red goes before white in a wash load or the bins go out on Tuesday. And now, now I have sat at a table, a nice table, a proper set table, someone's put real effort into, and watch an adult human being pick up the dessert spoon to eat their starter. Look at it, look confused, put it down, try a knife instead. Essentially auditioning every implement on the table like they're playing the game as where you guess what's in the box. The knife pointing though. You know the one, someone's mid-conversation, knife in hand, and instead of resting on the plate like a normal person, they hold it upright, straight up, like they're about to signal away to Invictorian London or take an oath. Or, and I cannot stress this enough, stab something directly above the table. Why? Why is the knife vertical? What is it defending against? Put the knife down on the plate, it's not a wand, you are not casting a spell, you are eating a roast dinner in Surrey. And while we're on knives, staying vertical, let's talk about what happens to cutlery when you're not actively using it, because this is where things really fall apart. Proper form, and I didn't invent this, this is just the rule. Knife and fork crossed on the plate, roughly like an X, or laid diagonally side by side, tips pointing up towards the middle. That's pausing. That's I'm having a sip of wine and a chat, don't take my plate. And knife and fork parallel side by side, straight down the middle of the plate, hands at six o'clock. That's finished. You may remove this now, thank you. It's basically Morse code for a waiter. Two positions, that's it, that's the entire vocabulary. And what do people do instead? Cutlery flung across the plate at random angles, like they've been dropped from a height. Fork balanced half on the plate, half on the tablecloth, gravy dripping onto someone's nice linen, knife just abandoned, blade resting directly on the table itself. This is no code being communicated here. The waiter looks at that plate and has genuinely no idea if you finished, paused, or if a small argument broke out mid-meal. But, and I need everyone to sit down for this one, under no circumstances, none, ever do you lick your knife. I don't care how good the mayonnaise was, I don't care if there's a stubborn bit of butter that's really calling to you. A knife is not a lolly. It has an edge, it's not there for pleasure, it's there for cutting. And the second it goes anywhere near your tongue, I am no longer able to continue the meal. I have to leave. I have to go and stand outside and reconsider several of my life choices. This isn't etiquette snobbery, it's a basic safety briefing. And then then there's the napkin question. I have watched someone at an actual wedding, an actual formal sit-down wedding breakfast, stare at the folded napkin next to their plate with the exact expression of a man who's just been handed a parking fine in a language he doesn't speak. Not knowing to put it on your lap, not knowing it's for your mouth, not your sleeve, one memorable occasion someone used it to wipe down their phone screen. Their phone screen. At a wedding. There was a whole roast chicken glistening six inches away, and the napkin's job in that moment was a screen cleaner. Line in the sand. Knives lie flat. Never touch your tongue and get parked properly. Cross to pause, lined up to finish. And a napkin lives on your lap and dabs your mouth, not your Samsung. That's the whole ask. It's not etiquette, it's just remembering what objects are for. Okay, this one's less of a rant, more a genuine, slightly emotional history lesson because, and the younger listeners, brace yourselves, there was a time when John Lewis had silver service. I mean an actual silver service restaurant in the store. Waiting staff in uniform, trolleys, and the whole works. You'd go up for your food shop, and if you fancied it, you could also sit down, be served a three-course lunch with proper cutlery, proper china, someone spooning vegetables on your plate with a silver platter, like you were mine and royalty, popping in for a browse around the curtain department. This wasn't the Ritz, this was a department store. You could buy a toaster and a tablecloth, and then go and be waited on like you'd wandered into a manor house by mistake. And I bring this up not to be misty-eyed about the past for the sake of it, but because it tells you something quite specific about how far the baseline has moved. That wasn't considered fancy particularly, that was just what a nice department store did, because there was a broad shared expectation of what being served nicely looked like. It wasn't reserved for weddings and Christmas, it was a Tuesday lunch option next to the escalators near the habadashery. Compare that to now, where the height of dining formality for most people encounter is a QR code on the table that takes you to a PDF of the menu, and you order your own food on your own phone and a robot on wheels, generally actual restaurants have this now, trondles over with your plate on a tray, and you have to lift it off the robot yourself. We've gone from a human being in a waistcoat spooning your carrots for you to a Wi-Fi-enabled trolley silently judging you as you retrieve your own Noki. Line in the Sand. I'm not saying bring back the white gloves, and I'm not asking for silver service at home base. But we used to think eating nicely mattered enough to build it into a shopping trip, and now the bar is the robot didn't crash into a pillar. That's the trajectory, and I'm allowed to be a little sad about it. And finally, the one that's turned into a genuine low-level obsession for me, afternoon tea. And specifically the fact that almost nobody under a certain age can tune you what it actually is. What high tea is, or that they're not. Brace yourself again, the same thing. Afternoon tea, properly historically, is the posh one. It's the one with the three-tiered stand, finger sandwiches on the bottom, crusts off, obviously, scones in the middle with jam and clotted cream, and don't get me started on which goes first, that's a whole nother episode. Little cakes and pastries go on the top. It happens in the afternoon, hence the name Wildly, and it was traditionally an upper class thing, a gap filler between lunch and a late dinner, invented so the story goes, because one bored Duchess got peckish around four o'clock and started a national institution out of it. High tea, meanwhile, despite sounding fancier, high, very grand, very downton, is actually the working class one. It's called high because it was eaten at proper high dining table after a full day's work and is a proper meal. Meat, pie, bread, the works. Not dainty sandwiches with crust soft. So high tea is dinner, essentially, and afternoon tea is a fancy snack. And somehow, through decades of drift, the entire country has landed on afternoon tea, high tea, same thing, cake and a cupper, who cares. And I've watched this happen in real time. I've watched someone book a high tea experience expecting a full roast dinner situation and get handed a single scon and a pot of Earl Grey and stand there, genuinely betrayed, like they've been missold a car. I've watched a 20-something describe a trip to a hotel for posh high tea when what they've actually had, by every rule of the English language, was afternoon tea, and I've had to sit there biting my tongue because apparently correcting someone's tea terminology at a table makes you the difficult one. And here's where it turns a bit for me, because underneath the pedantry, what actually gets me is that both of these things meant something once. They were built around specific lives, specific classes, specific rhythms of the day, one for people who worked with their hands and needed a proper hot meal at half five, one for people who had nothing to do at four o'clock except be bored in a large house. And now they've both been flattened into the same vague, Instagrammable event. A stand of sandwiches, a pot of tea, a hashtag, and the actual history has just evaporated, along with apparently everyone's ability to tend them apart. Line in the sand. Afternoon tea is posh and small. High tea is a proper dinner for people who've earned it. They are not interchangeable, whatever the hotel website tells you, and I will die on this particularly faintly ridiculous hill. Right, the verdicts. Cutlery down, teapot cold as promised. Cutlery and napkins Verdict Outside in, knives flat and nowhere near your tongue. Crossed to pause, line up to finish, napkin on lap. Not etiquette snobbery, basic operating instructions. John Lewis and Silver Service. Verdict. We've traded a man in a waistcoat spooning your carrots for a robot you have to unload yourself, and that is genuinely the whole arc of British dining. Afternoon tea versus high tea. One's posh and dainty, one's a proper working dinner, and no hotel website gets to tell me otherwise. If this one landed, rate it, review it, and send it to whomever in your life still points a knife at the ceiling mid-sentence. And if you're subscribed, there's more mini rants coming your way this week. That's me done. I'm off to go and have a cup of tea properly at a table with the cutler in the right order, and pray nobody near me tries to clean their phone on the good napkin. Until next time.