Peter Langan, who co-owned Langan’s in Mayfair with Michael Caine in its 1980s pomp, apparently subsisted on twelve bottles of champagne per diem. “Most nights,” photographer Richard Young remembers, “It was the Peter Langan show.” On one occasion, an outraged guest discovered a dead cockroach in the ladies’ loo. “Well, it can’t be one of ours,” Langan said. “This cockroach is dead. All ours are alive and healthy” — at which point he popped the insect in his mouth and swallowed it whole, washed down with a thimble of vintage Krug. On another occasion, Richard Shepherd received a nervous call during lunch service. “I am speaking from the managing director’s office at Sotheby's," the voice said down the line. “I believe we have Mr Langan in our sales room. I wonder if you could send somebody over to pick him up — he is halfway up the stairs on a bookcase, and every time somebody goes past he keeps telling them to fuck off.” Later on Langan barred dancer Rudolf Nureyev for the crime, simply, of “being himself”, called Orson Welles a “stupid fat fuck” to his face, and developed a notorious party trick which involved biting the ankles of unsuspecting female diners. He even fell out with Caine, describing him as “mediocrity with halitosis who has a council house mind,” though Caine soon shot back. “Peter stumbles around in a cloud of his own vomit and is a complete social embarrassment,” he said. “You would have a more interesting conversation with a cabbage.”