Desperately lazing Susan

Do you know who I feel sorry for? Susan. So many people have used the things – and who can really be bothered to stretch across a large table? – but it’s poor Susan who has been tarred with the mean spirited brush of laziness.

I’m lazy too, but nothing has been named after me yet. Maybe I shouldn’t feel sorry for Susan, what a legacy. Famous like Cher and Madonna (who needs a surname?) and yet blissfully anonymous. That’s probably the level of fame to aspire to. She probably need many good things in her life that have gone unrecognised, and this is how we repay her. Or at least she meant to do lots of good things if only she could get off this sofa. It’s a hard life.

They bloody love a good lazy Susan in China you know. Almost every dinner I went to when I was in Beijing the other month featured a revolving centrepiece festooned with harrowing dishes of whole animals frozen in death. Or coated and deep fried in death in the case of one particular chicken. They also bloody love serving the animal in its entirety, which is a shock the first eight times a gurning grouper fish comes spinning past your body plate.

Susan is not famous in China though – their word for the device literally translates as ‘dinner table turntable’. Susan’s publicists clearly have some work to do. Or perhaps she was just too lazy to make the journey.