Going Italian in Fulham

There are three types of Italian restaurant in London. You've got your trendy fine dining rooms - anywhere you find a Novelli or a Locatelli-type genius in the whites, truffles on the menu and cookery books on the bestsellers list. There are those miserable, dated and dingy joints where people conduct affairs, pudding comes on a trolley and there's one yellowing review taped to the window. And then you've got the fun tratt. Lively, busy, selling fine, rather than 'fine dining', pizza, pasta and a bit of carne, house vino by the gallon.

The SW post codes, especially 3, 6, 7 and 10, are the natural home of the fun tratt. The population in these areas, Fulham more or less, is supportive of places which are uncomplicated and jolly. Normally I would poke fun at Fulham and its environs. As we walked into Il Pagliaccio on Wandsworth Bridge Road we were doing our best rugger bugger, Tufton-Bufton impersonations, yah yah yah, rah rah rah.

Absolutely hilarious. Except our bunch of pretentious West London twits had a better laugh at Il Pagliaccio than we've ever had in any Italian in our own neighbourhood. We ate our words, with some bruschetta to take the edge off our appetites. The tomatoes were a tad orange and woolly, but with plenty of fresh basil and flavoursome oil to buoy them up.

It was busy, and we had no booking (we had meant to review steakhouse El Asado up the road, but it was mysteriously closed). I said, 'Table for five' and the incredibly queeny waiter - in a sheer net top, immaculately plucked eyebrows and full-on Cillainthe-Sixties hairdo - said, 'Ooh, we're really busy,' then pulled two tables together and said, 'There you go, sit down.' There were happy couples and grim couples, chaps in chinos and geezers in tracksuits. Italian football was on the telly. There was a rumbustious all-human-life vibe.

As we ordered, Jane burnt Cilla's fishnet top and he scampered off to inspect the damage. Uh-oh, the waiter hates us now. Throughout the evening, Jane apologised profusely. By the time we got to coffee, hugs were being exchanged. How do fun tratt waiters do it? They are stressed, they are busy, they find time to catch the pizza maker's dough as he spins it round his head, wrap it round their neck like a tie and dance round the room to general hilarity. 'Are you on drugs?' asked one of our party. 'No, it's all natural,' said Pizza Dough Tie. 'Three grams of natural then,' we said.

The menu is old-fashioned Italian. The pizzas were big and thin-crusted - my pizza Pagliaccio was topped with zucchini, rocket, bresaola. Deepfried calamari was fresh and not oily or rubbery. The only bloomer was a salad without dressing, featuring a shrivelled piece of cucumber.

The neighbouring table could not sing the place's praises highly enough. 'It's the sort of restaurant,' they said, 'where if you forget to pay the bill because they have plied you with free shots and bottles of Prosecco, they are likely to forget about it.' In a local, things like this are way more important than Michelin stars.