Calm down dear, it’s only a cruise

A week-long cruise in the Western Isles of Scotland, on a converted fishing boat carrying just 11 passengers and four crew, was one of the highlights of my year. The scenery was superb and the food was fantastic; The Majestic Line, who operate two similar boats – Glen Tarsan (above) and Glen Massan – are clearly onto a winner.
Next April a Winner will be onto them. Film director, restaurant critic, insurance salesman and all-round irritant Michael Winner has chartered one of the boats for a cruise with fiancee Geraldine Edwards.
He says he saw an ad in Country Life magazine and that the food – freshly-caught fish, lobster, scallops and shrimps – looked terrific.
Not for him, though, sharing a communal dinner table with fellow passengers. Winner says that when sales manager Marie Thoms explained that part of the fun was the group experience of sharing the adventure with other people, he told her he “I don’t do groups.”
Potential fellow-passengers might consider themselves fortunate they won’t have to share a boat with Winner – even Geraldine will probably accept that he is not always the most amenable of companions. His attire might upset even the local wildlife; he promises to be wearing “shirt not tucked in, pyjama bottoms, suede loafers.”
That might be acceptable at home in London, Michael, or at your usual holiday haunts of the French Riviera, Barbados or Italy but Scotland is an entirely different matter.
I’m not sure whether The Majestic Line’s three chefs will be keen to cook for the curmudgeonly critic or whether they would rather be on duty elsewhere. His assessment of restaurants, in the pages of the Sunday Times and on television, can be unnecessarily acerbic. But I reckon Doug Wilson, who cooked for me, would win him over with his porridge and Loch Fyne kippers at breakfast, and fish pie – from the freshest ingredients – at dinner.
I’m don’t know yet whether Winner will be sailing from Dunoon or Oban, on Glen Tarsan or sister vessel Glen Massan. Marie Thoms would only tell me: “We are delighted to have Michael coming onboard in 2011.  As you will appreciate with all our guests I cannot give any information out about his cruise as it is confidential.”
But we will all know soon enough. Winner promises to deliver “a meticulous report.”