Alice Coster: James Corden gets rude awakening in New York restaurant spat

If the way someone treats a waiter, an Uber driver or a lollipop person is a good indication of their basic humanity, James Corden is on shaky ground.

Never trust a man with a handshake like a wet fish. Never trust anyone who is rude to waiters.

Grandad had other maxims. Never ask would you like another drink. It only serves to remind someone they have already had one.

Or, as was generally the case with his grog-blossomed generation, more than a few.

But it was the handshake and the waiters that stuck.

Because the way someone treats a waiter, a taxi driver, an Uber driver, a receptionist or a lollipop person is a pretty good indication of their basic humanity.

This week’s case in point: The Late Late Show host James Corden.

Named, shamed and justifiably blamed, Corden is one of those celebrities people love to loathe for no particular reason.

Keira Knightley, with her pout, is another. The wife in Breaking Bad. Rebel Wilson. Or Anne Hathaway five years ago. Lisa Wilkinson, Hughesy, Osher Gunsberg, the list goes on.

Corden has one of those annoying, bubbly faces that just grates. He trades on being warm and sunny, when what’s really lurking underneath is a whole lotta a-hole.

He has been cut from the Ellen DeGeneres cloth. Rebel took a swatch too.

So, when Corden was rightly reprimanded by cult Manhattan restaurateur Keith McNally this week, there was a delicious taste to it.

James Corden has been named and shamed by the Balthazar owner. Picture: Getty

Corden’s true colours were shining through, not just the celebrity puff.

McNally owns New York’s famed Balthazar bistro and like the hospo scene from yesteryear (before everyone went all mung-bean warm and fuzzy) he’s not afraid to let rip.

In an almighty spray, McNally announced to the ’Gram that the British-comedian-turned-US TV host was not just rude, but “the most abusive customer to my servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago”.

McNally went on to detail two recent incidents of Corden acting “diabolical”.

The first involved the comedian reprimanding a waiter when he noticed a stray hair in his meal. Fair play, except Corden ate the entire meal before delivering the spray.

He then demanded that free drinks should start flowing, or else.

Poor form.

The second incident resulted in this “tiny cretin of a man” (McNally’s oh so delightful words) getting “86’d” (and more of that later).

Corden went feral after finding some egg white in his wife’s egg-yolk omelette.

If ordering an egg-yolk omelette and then complaining about a perceived smidgen of white doesn’t scream pretentious tosser, I’m not sure what does.

But back to getting 86’d, which is US hospo-speak for being thrown out and harks back to someone being taken 80 miles outside of town, executed and buried six feet under. At least that’s one theory.

It was supposedly what happened to US union boss Jimmy Hoffa, whose body has never been found.

New York’s famed Balthazar bistro in Little Italy. Picture: Getty.

As a dreadlocked twenty-something I was 86’d from Byron Bay’s Beach Hotel for a year after dressing Michael Hutchence’s brother, Rhett, in drag and sneaking him into the pub before gender-bending was the norm.

Rhett had already been 86’d by pub security for some now-forgotten misdemeanour and we dolled him up in a red wig and one of my old rave dresses.

We were tossed out after Rhett let it all hang out but we copped our punishment, although somewhat sulkily.

A friend’s cousin was 86’d more recently from the local tavern after dumping, of a kind, on the dancefloor. It is a lifetime ban and, yes, she deserved that.

But I digress.

Rude behaviour from adults who should know better is worse.

At a fancy restaurant opening in South Yarra, I heard a household name whistling impatiently at the bar staff.

If wearing a white tuxedo wasn’t ostentatious enough, the richlister had his fingers in his mouth as if directing sheep dogs and was hollering to be served.

“I’m happy to pay,” he growled to onlookers staring at him aghast.

“It’s not like I don’t have the cash,” he sneered.

Grandad would have told him that money can’t buy class.

Waiters have to put up with a lot. I have seen them at fine-dining restaurants subtly stepping over legless customers passed out on the floor.

They work long hours at minimum wage and at the end of the day are serving food you are soon to devour. Be polite.

Back in New York, James Corden now finds himself back at Balthazar after making a grovelling apology, which shows class on the part of McNally.

The restaurateur said he “strongly believed in second chances.”

We all need those said grandad. But I bet Corden’s handshake is as limp as his apology.