Ranald ruffles feathers with his "fascinating" Fidel Castro remark
Here are some quotes from our Smoking Room event with Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants (see video below).
On smoking bans and smokers
“I tend to prefer people who smoke, and people who smoke tend to prefer Boisdale, and we’re still an important slice of the population. People who smoke have a certain thirst for life. It’s a massive generalisation but smokers are good people, so it’s just a part of what we are so I can’t imagine divorcing it, and as it is part of what we are we attract a lot of those people so if we suddenly became a non-smoking venue I think we’d do a lot less business.”
On defining himself as Scottish although he was born and brought up in England
“I think I’m Scottish because I’m the son of a chief and I have Scottish genes. I don’t think my accent or necessarily where I was brought up has much to bear upon it, but I regret not being brought up in Scotland, not terribly, but I would like to be more Scottish ... I was brought up in England but I identify with Scotland but a lot of Scots wouldn’t necessarily identify with me because they wouldn’t like the cut of my jib.”
On Scottish independence
“The Union, which is all based on the empire and the trading, is significant because it’s important historically, but it’s only some 300 odd years so I can’t get too hung up on it. I think we’re much better together, albeit most people in Scotland wouldn’t vote the same way as most people in England so I’m pretty ambivalent about it ... it would be a shame, it would be slightly sad, but I don’t care that much.”
On haggis
"All haggis is is an unevolved medieval sausage and a similar sort of thing would have existed throughout Europe because they didn’t have agas and ranges and frying pans. You just had a cauldron, a container with which you cooked what meal, seasoning and what animal parts you put in. It was just wrapped up and boiled. So in the West Highlands we would often just bleed the cattle as the Masai do in Africa and take the blood from the cattle and mix that with the oats, so really it was just common peasant food. You’d take what nutrition you could and you’d boil it all up, and we just maintained that tradition for longer.
“The seasoning that went into haggis was probably introduced in the 19th century [and] reflects our British empire and all the spices that were available because you’ve got sophisticated spices in haggis. You’ve got nutmeg and pepper and bits and pieces, so it’s quite a sophisticated thing to come out of this peasant food. But haggis is, basically, totally delicious and no-one who likes meat could eat it and not enjoy it. Some people have an issue with thinking about it too much.”
More controversial perhaps were his comments when I asked him about Fidel Castro:
“Well, Fidel, I probably won’t be able to sum it up. I stood next to him, for 40 minutes, once. I didn’t exchange any words with him, and I’ve attended various dinners where he’s been present and he’s spoken at length. When I say at length, he spoke for about three-and-a-half hours and he wasn’t even intended to speak and the whole dinner just collapsed and all the celebrations, the fireworks, the band, everything, and nothing happened. He just got up on stage and started speaking.
“But he’s one of the most enigmatic and fascinating men of the 20th century. Funnily enough, I’m not a particular fan of Edward Heath, although he was a customer of mine in the early days, but Edward Heath, when asked to name the three people in the 20th century he most admired, Fidel Castro was one of them. He’s a subject in his own right and I don’t think that he was in any way cruel, but some of the policies he followed obviously had nasty side effects and partly that was because Britain and America pushed Cuba into the arms of Russia which needn’t have necessarily have been the case.”
Knowing how much Ranald enjoys visiting Cuba – in 2013 I joined him on the Boisdale Jazz and Cigar Club jaunt to Havana for the annual cigar festival – I wasn't surprised by this rather generous opinion of the late dictator.
Although nothing was said during the meeting, we subsequently received this response to our invitation to our next webinar on March 10.
Thank you but I was disappointed with Ranald especially when he started harping on how wonderful Fidel Castro was (IMO a most evil unelected communist who treated his political opponents with terror and death). Here’s a capitalist with restaurants praising a vile creature where they still (long before Covid) have to queue for toilet rolls!
I gave up smoking in 1993 but I have never preached to others and (on the rare occasions it happens) nor do I prevent people from smoking in my house. However, following my last experience, while you can keep me on your emailing list because I am also a big supporter of our beleaguered hospitality sector, I shan’t be joining you next week.
Here's my reply. I hope I wasn't too brusque but I found his decision to boycott our next event because he didn't like something that was said by a guest in a completely different meeting a bit, well, odd:
Thanks for your email and feedback. We welcome your support and I share your reservations about Fidel Castro but we can't predict what our guests will say nor would I want to censor them, as long as they don't slander anyone. Freedom of speech is just as important as freedom of choice so it would be hypocritical for Forest to choose our guests purely on whether we agree with everything they say.
Also, I'm not a mindreader so it's impossible to know what any of our guests are going to say and I personally welcome views I don't necessarily agree with because it makes such events more interesting. For example, we would be happy to give a platform to anti-smoking campaigners (they decline our invitations) because, for me, there's nothing worse than hosting an echo chamber in which everyone is in complete agreement.
All I can say is, if you disagree with one of our speakers we do our best to give everyone who wants to speak an opportunity to respond. Therefore you should have told Ranald what you thought of his views on Castro. I'm sure people would have found such a discussion interesting and provocative.
Anyway, even without an anti-smoker on the panel I hope that next week's event (Smokefree: A Better Britain?) will be equally enjoyable.
I thought the subject might be a hard sell but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. Click here to register.
Meanwhile, here’s the Ranald video.