COULD IT BE true? Had we just made the first ever Halal Irish stew?

The lamb’s slaughterer could not have predicted such a destiny. I said my thank you in Arabic to the butcher and strolled past the Filipino grocery shops and South African estate agents, past the well-muscled groups of homosexuals and Aus­tralians guzzling beer, past the 30-metre Madonna cleavage squashed into a French corset. I am in Earl’s Court, south-west London – I doubt the Earl would recognise it now.