Henry Dimbleby's Diary

Babies have terrible timing. My wife Mima was supposed to have given birth to our third child two weeks ago. Instead, she had to be induced on the same week as the long-anticipated launch of our new menu at Leon. But even I know that it doesn't do to grumble about work while your wife is having her cervix pulled about so forcefully that the pain has made her glasses steam up. I am, in fact, quite a good birthing partner these days - so Mima tells me, and she is not one to spare the constructive criticism.

Practice makes perfect, I suppose, though this time I found myself feeling strangely self-conscious as I massaged and pep-talked and panted in sympathy. I realised afterwards that I was suffering from an excess of One Born Every Minute, the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall series set on a labour ward. Mima made me watch every episode during this pregnancy, so that now the various stages of labour have become televisual clichés for me. Instead of just being an anxious husband, trying his best to support his wife, I felt I was playing the part, as seen on TV. On the plus side, I felt I was doing better than most of the fathers in the series. I'm thinking, with particular fondness, of the husband who blew up a surgical glove into a bulging blue coxcomb and playfully boffed his wife over the head with it. Reality TV gives us mercifully low standards to beat.

My week's paternity leave has largely been spent fussing quietly over the new Leon menu. My business partner John Vincent has masterminded this one, but I can't resist interfering. Being an entrepreneur is a bit like fatherhood; there's nothing 9-5 about it. The pride and worry are with you all the time.

John and I have always wanted Leon to be proper fast food, in the sense that it feels like fun. When we were little, our parents used to take us to fast-food restaurants for a once-a-term treat. For me it was the Putney Burger King, for John the McDonald's in Southgate. John used to get so excited beforehand that he'd lie on his back and wave his arms and legs in the air. What we're trying to do at Leon is produce good food that feels like a treat. The new menu includes baked fries - in a nostalgic 1970s-style waffle cut - and a poached egg topped with truffle gruyère for breakfast. If it makes you fall to the floor with your legs in the air, our work will be done.

My friend Roly believes that you can divide everyone into two camps. On the one side: people who like The Beatles, cats and Tintin. On the other: those who prefer The Rolling Stones, dogs and Astérix. After extensive late-night straw polls I can confirm that this is broadly true - and also that Beatles lovers like McDonald's, whereas Stones fans favour Burger King.

We were lucky enough to have Mary Portas write some nice things about Leon last week in a newspaper. A friend, the chef/proprietor of one of London's best restaurants, tweeted me immediately: 'Phew! [The standard restaurateur's reaction to any decent review.] She's our scariest regular at the restaurant. Brilliant, though.'

A couple of months ago, Portas produced a report for the government on how to revive Britain's high streets. This is something that all fast-food businesses have a keen interest in: we rely largely on passing trade, so we need busy, vibrant high streets full of shops and offices. But while the business community is generally sceptical of the TV expert parachuted in to fix the world, Portas has real experience. She understands that for high streets to work, the shops must connect with passers-by. The other thing I like about her is that she hasn't given up hope in the face of the overwhelming economic advantage of out-of-town supermarkets and malls. As Steve Jobs said: 'The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.'

As I'm writing this, John has sent me an email entitled: 'The food in my dad's renal unit.' The attached photograph shows a picture of two plates on a plastic tray. One holds two grey scoops of mashed potato and a horizontal ooze of luminous yellow macaroni cheese. The other looks like packet trifle topped with packet custard. (Although it could be the by-product of a surgical procedure. I can't be sure.) Now, I'm no kidney surgeon, but it strikes me that a diet of unrelieved sugar and white flour is unlikely to benefit any hospital patient, let alone one with major organ failure. Despite the efforts of celebrity chefs, it seems this is one problem that reality TV can't solve. While the NHS doctors and nurses are busy saving patients' lives, its catering is still busy poisoning them.
(leon restaurants.co.uk)