&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/68161?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Bruce+Robinson%3A+%27I%27m+just+going+to+take+my+liver+for+a+wash%27%3AArticle%3A1644146&amp;ch=Life+and+style&amp;c3=Obs&amp;c4=Food+and+drink++%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CJohnny+Depp+%28Film%29%2CFilm&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews%2CFood+and+Drink&amp;c6=Euan+Ferguson&amp;c7=11-Oct-16&amp;c8=1644146&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Feature%2CInterview&amp;c11=Life+and+style&amp;c13=Lunch+with+...&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FFood+%26+drink&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;The Withnail director is returning to the movies with Johnny Depp. But first there&#039;s a meal with Euan Ferguson to negotiate, oysters to eat, red wine to drink and waitresses to charm&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am apologising, as we take our first seats behind a big slab of a secret wooden door that must outweigh the All Black front row. It is a truly &lt;em&gt;magic&lt;/em&gt; door, like something invented by Roald Dahl, just for children who drink &ndash; and lets us slip into a cool, smart hideaway in Soho; and I&#039;m apologising to Bruce Robinson for not being one of this mag&#039;s usual stock of clever cheekboned women over-infused with vivre, panache, esprit and other words unacquaintanced in English.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But, then again, so is every female inside Mark Hix&#039;s establishment &ndash; not necessarily in words, but certainly with eyes and body language. It is astonishing how some people &ndash; this man is now 65 &ndash; still, somehow, just &lt;em&gt;command&lt;/em&gt; flirty looks from waitresses 40 years the junior of him: a kind of courtly love prevails, even though he&#039;s in jeans and a dodgy cravat thing. He is, admittedly, charming, and effortlessly courteous, and still good-looking; but no one actually knows who he is, or if or why he&#039;s famous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do know who Bruce Robinson is, and am about to find out a lot more. Most of it in affably colourful language. It&#039;s safest for this magazine&#039;s sanity if&amp;nbsp;I substitute the words &quot;chuffing&quot; and &quot;todd&quot; for the concomitant seven- and four-letter words Bruce quietly drops everywhere, through habit rather than guile or anger; fricative and plosive, they&#039;re actually right in almost all contexts. Anyway, Robinson is probably best known as writer/director of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/may/14/idemandwithnailandiii&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Withnail and I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but also has a fat backpack of screenwriting and directing successes (&lt;em&gt;The Killing Fields&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;How to Get Ahead in Advertising&lt;/em&gt;) and an equally worthy history of falling out with Hollywood morons and &quot;todds&quot; and thus being perhaps less famous than he might be. He&#039;s about to accidentally remedy that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Rum Diary&lt;/em&gt;, his adaptation/screenplay/direction of the story by Hunter S Thompson is a delight; a&amp;nbsp;marvel. Johnny Depp, who begged Robinson out of semi-retirement to write and direct, acts superbly and may now be forgiven for the dire continuance of the Pirates franchise. It&#039;s set in Puerto Rico, in 1960, and deals, in glorious primary colours, with journalism, racism, cold war politics, misogyny, Nixon, poverty and the flaws in the American Dream.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bruce wants to move seats because he can&#039;t hear me; it&#039;s a lovely place but it is&hellip; clattery. And he has tinnitus. He charms teams of people into moving all our stuff downstairs to the quiet bar, and we talk about politics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I&#039;ve always been that contemptible thing, a luxury communist. Sure, you can drive around in a chuffing Ferrari in my politics, provided somebody else isn&#039;t hungry. But all of this nonsense, Tory, Labour, Liberal, leaves me cold, what&#039;s the difference. It&#039;s a pejorative phrase, champagne socialist, and probably rightly &ndash; I can&#039;t drink champagne and I certainly hate chuffing socialism &ndash; but I also hate the idea of me being OK and some other chuffer being unable to feed their family. Now&hellip; shall we risk the oysters? Are you an actress?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This last is asked not of me but of a svelte Swede waiting stoically for our order. Please, Bruce, I murmur afterwards, tell me you don&#039;t &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; say&amp;nbsp;that to pretty waitresses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No, no, never, she sounded like a voice I&#039;d heard on the BBC. Didn&#039;t know she was Swedish, she had perfect English. It&#039;s a bugger, being an actress, and we all have to help them. My daughter is one, and she&#039;s really talented, very and actually extraordinarily beautiful, but it&#039;s so hard, this industry. She&#039;s doing German clothes catalogues.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We talk a little about beauty: this man spent a good few years with Lesley-Anne Down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Eleven years we were together. Yes, she was rather a good-looking girl. Were you in love with her, too?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behind menu and blushes, I wonder if he has ever re-watched &lt;em&gt;Withnail&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I saw it, curiously, after about 15 years, with my son, who&#039;s 17. He&#039;d been saying to me that all the boys at school were watching it. Bizarrely it hasn&#039;t aged. It&#039;s about trying to cope with generational change, which is universal, but it&#039;s also a film about anger. And, yes, I am so enraged by what&#039;s going on, with, say, bankers. That reminds me&hellip; there was a line of mine about humans being the only living things that claim belief in God, then act as if there was no God&hellip; rewatching Johnny doing that made me realise that&#039;s what I still feel about this, about bankers, about all of the todds on earth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ridiculously big question Bruce but when does that happen, when does the change or preference arrive?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think you&#039;re a good person or a&amp;nbsp;todd by the age of eight.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Parents, is it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, I had the most appalling childhood. I was just chuffing hated as a child. Now, who&#039;s going to open the oysters? Oh, they&#039;re open already. Oh, man. They are delicious, aren&#039;t they? Doesn&#039;t this taste glorious, even more so when you remember eating badly? Those Camden years of mine, only option was saveloy, I almost starved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I tell him about oysters I once had in Tasmania, at the Bay of Fires. Our guide, a certificated oyster diver, returned from the brine with a fat bag of them, shucked them on the shore and then pulled from the sea a roped and chilled bottle of Pipers Brook chardonnay. It was&hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No, no, NO!&quot; he shouts, theatrically covering his ears. &quot;Don&#039;t talk about heaven to me, because I don&#039;t believe in God.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He interrupts himself a minute later, as he talks about British restaurants. &quot;You can remember when food was shit, can&#039;t you? It&#039;s happening in the cities, but it&#039;s not universal, and,&lt;em&gt; oh&lt;/em&gt;, write down that line actually. I need that. &#039;Don&#039;t talk about heaven to me because I don&#039;t believe in God.&#039; I love that line. I can&#039;t even think because I&#039;ve just had a chuffing bottle of red.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you OK? I ask. He is clutching parts of his chest, has been giggling  and the cravat thing has slid off. &quot;Mmm? &ndash; absolutely. But I think I might soon be forced on to the pavement for a smoke. First, I&#039;m  just going to go and take my liver  for a&amp;nbsp;wash. See you outside?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have been for a fun cigarette and a cigar. Back downstairs, the mains await. &quot;You&#039;ve got a fish finger. You&#039;ve got a chuffing fish finger!&quot; guffaws Bruce, before happily sliding into his silver mullet and &quot;Friday Chips&quot;; actually, my Webster&#039;s Special is beyond delight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Everything we eat at home we grow, almost. We&#039;ve got lambs up on the hills eating our wild flowers, and then we eat them. My wife does the cooking mainly; I&#039;ll do curries and stuff but it takes me all day, she&#039;s far better. We&#039;re in Herefordshire, best food in England. So I love food, but I also find myself obsessed with the chuffing world around me. Chuffing Iranians hanging homosexuals. And too many bits of America, though I love other bits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just before we part I mention that the film looked exuberant&hellip; fun&hellip; in the making. &quot;Absolutely. American crew, and they were all saying the lines, laughing. We had that with &lt;em&gt;Withnail&lt;/em&gt;, too. Gaffers and electricians, saying the lines. And no corporates, no box-ticking. If I&#039;d tried the BBC today with &lt;em&gt;Withnail&lt;/em&gt;, it wouldn&#039;t tick one box. They&#039;d want every scene worked over with the question &ndash; why is that funny?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the stairs up I wonder whether he worried, much, about death. &quot;I worry about death all chuffing day. Don&#039;t you? I&#039;m with Keats. He wrote &#039;When I have fears that I may cease to be/Before my pen has glean&#039;d my teeming brain&hellip;&#039; &ndash; God, you need to read or re-read it&hellip; we all have so much to say, still.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Rum Diary is scheduled for release on 11 November&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/food-and-drink&quot;&gt;Food &amp; drink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/johnnydepp&quot;&gt;Johnny Depp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/euanferguson&quot;&gt;Euan Ferguson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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