Smiling at Smith's

Just before the summer holidays, I went back with Guy to his old school in Brentwood, where he was giving the prizes.

The school had a glorious motto, Virtue, Learning and Manners, to which all the well-behaved, smartly turned out and polite children seemed to adhere. It was a pleasant surprise - pupils burned down my school ten years after I left. But it also made me realise what little value we now place on manners and how rarely we expect to find them in others. Good manners were one of the quintessentially British characteristics - part of the cement which held communities together - which Blair, in his horror at tradition and his obsession with the cool and the modern, constantly chipped away at.

Blair himself was, of course, educated at Fettes, a posh public school, and perhaps there is something peculiar to those institutions which makes their products notoriously rude, believing that manners are for the 'little people' (as Cherie used disparagingly to call them in correspondence).

I'm told - though I've not witnessed it first hand - that Eton-educated Cameron is heir to Blair in that respect, too. He stands up hosts at the last minute. Arrangements are cancelled without explanation by a PA. Invitations languish unanswered. He ignores his supporters up until the point they indicate - as they seem to be doing in increasing numbers - that they will defect. And he never says thank you. (His predecessor, grammar school boy Michael Howard, was quite the opposite: a charming handwritten thank-you note would turn up within 24 hours of a dinner or party. Another reason to save the grammar schools.)

But hope is shimmering on the political horizon - for it seems that Gordon Brown is bringing manners back to Downing Street. Correspondence gets dealt with. Civil servants are treated - appropriately - with civility. People are thanked. And it was, I believe, good old-fashioned manners which were behind the Prime Minister asking Lady Thatcher back to Downing Street at the end of last week. She is our greatest elder statesman and the most distinguished former occupant of Downing Street: it was absolutely right and courteous of the current tenant to invite her back.

In trying new restaurants you get a taste of how some people disregard manners, simply because you step out of a comfort zone of familiarity. On a first visit you're always an outsider, looking in - and I like observing how customers treat staff, and vice versa. What's especially sad is noticing how many restaurant staff are taken aback if customers are actually polite to them.

I've eaten at Smiths many times but never with the critical eye of a reviewer. The building consists of four floors of eateries and bars which make it a kind of restaurant emporium - though I'm inclined to avoid its topfloor restaurant, which has a tendency to attract boorish City boys. You know the type - they arm-wrestle and giggle like girls, with spilled wine and sweat making dark splodges all over their blue-striped shirts.

Instead, I gravitate towards the brasserie which, although it misses out on the views over St Paul's, overlooks the Victorian magnificence of Smithfield Market. I love the sense of history and purpose-that surrounds this great institution, which has supplied Londoners with meat since 1868.

The brasserie is a lively, buzzy place and it's dead relaxed - if you're wearing a suit you'll feel a misfit. It's a bit like walking into an English episode of Friends: everyone looks happy to be there and to be eating the food. And what food. In the main it's perfectly simple, with the occasional successful lurch into the pretentious.

To start, we shared a plate of 'lucky squid'. Garnished with spices and spinach, it was the ideal appetiser since it teased our tastebuds and left us hungry for more. Next, I had a cheeseburger which was as stodgy and juicy as a cheeseburger should be, and was accompanied by chips which I would score a generous eight out of ten. My friend opted for belly of pork - once a dish for the hard-up - but now to be found on the menu in the very poshest places. Just what is it about affluence which makes people want to eat like paupers?