Gail’s Bakery is embroiled in social media spat with fox-killing barrister Jolyon Maugham who tries to CANCEL the trendy chain and offers to send out ‘sourdough starter’ to shopper after disagreeing with co-owner’s views on lockdown and climate change
He’s best known for clubbing a fox to death while wearing his wife’s satin kimono on Boxing Day 2019 – before boasting about it on Twitter. But now Jolyon Maugham has identified a new target for his ire… the upmarket bakery chain Gail’s.
The 52-year-old left-wing London barrister is less than impressed after discovering the middle class favourite is part owned by Brexit-supporting businessman Luke Johnson, and is now calling for a ‘boycott’.
Taking, of course, to Twitter – now known as X – Mr Maugham wrote: ‘Before you spend money again at @GAILsBakery just check out the extraordinary timeline of @LukeJohnsonRCP who Chairs and co-owns it. The full libertarian right suite: climate denialism, ”woke” hating, anti-lockdown, Tufton Street promoting madness. #BoycottGails.’
He renewed his plea today, warning his followers against shopping at Gail’s ‘given what we know about [Mr Johnson’s] politics’ before offering to send out a ‘sourdough starter’ to a sympathetic follower who revealed she’d been buying bread from the chain every week for three years.
Mr Johnson today dismissed Mr Maugham’s comments, telling MailOnline they were ‘Twitter banter’ and ‘not the real world’.
Jolyon Maugham is calling for a boycott of Gail’s after finding out he disagrees with the views of its co-owner, Luke Johnson
The left-wing barrister offered to send out a ‘sourdough starter’ to a sympathetic follower who revealed she’d been buying bread from the chain every week for three years
Mr Maugham is founder of the Good Law Project, which has launched a string of high-profile legal cases against the government relating to Brexit, Covid and the environment
Luke Johnson is a serial entrepreneur and former chairman of the Pizza Express, the Royal Society of Arts and Channel 4. He previously owned the Ivy and now part owns Gail’s and sushi chain Feng Sushi.
READ MORE – A.N. WILSON: Is Jolyon the fox-killing, Brexit-loathing barrister with a penchant for silk kimonos the most ludicrous man in Britain?
Yesterday he appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to call the Covid Inquiry a ‘farce’ for focusing on the Eat Out to Help Out scheme rather than on ‘catastrophic’ lockdowns.
Branding the inquiry a ‘waste’ of million of pounds of taxpayers’ money, he said: ‘I think the whole thing is a farce. They are asking the wrong questions. They are not asking the key questions – which is, was lockdown proportionate and was it worth it?
‘I think lockdowns were a catastrophe – the collateral damage was completely ignored. There was never a proper test of whether the benefits were worth the cost.’
He added: ‘The hospitality industry is one that employs two million people – it is one of the largest in the country.
‘And it had been forced to close for many months and many thousands of businesses were close to the edge. They were desperate, facing oblivion.’
Mr Johnson has previously condemned ‘alarmist’ comments about climate change and spoken out against ‘wokeness’ at universities.
Luke Johnson is a serial entrepreneur and former chairman of the Pizza Express, the Royal Society of Arts and Channel 4. He previously owned the Ivy and now part owns Gail’s and sushi chain Feng Sushi
By contrast, Jolyon Maugham QC is founder of the Good Law Project, which has launched a string of high-profile legal cases against the government relating to Brexit, Covid and the environment.
READ MORE: How Gail’s became the new Waitrose – you know you’ve made it if you live near one
The fox-clubbing barrister recently released his memoir, Bringing Down Goliath, which led to fellow barrister Adam King likening him to Alan Partridge. ‘As with Partridge, so with Maugham: he is much funnier than he intends to be’.
Another drew attention to ‘his trademark self-pity, self-aggrandisement and capacity for tying himself into pompous knots’.
His response to one of his worst reviews, headlined: ‘The pompous bloviating of a Twitter KC’ — was to tweet that it had appeared in ‘the Brexit-supporting, pro-Climate Change, racist, transphobic, anti-abortion, supine to power Times’.
This attracted the attention of author JK Rowling, who wrote: ‘I’m sometimes asked how to handle bad reviews and usually answer along the lines of, ”We’ve all had them and it’s never fun”.
‘Sometimes you can learn from them. I find it helps to remember even Moby Dick got some stinkers. In future, I’ll just say, ”Never go full Jolyon”.’
Gail’s is an upmarket bakery and cafe chain beloved of London’s middle classes
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