Bashful billionaire Dick Enthoven was lunching at Societi Bistro on Wednesday and I didn’t dare look to see if chicken was his choice. For roast capon just has to be his favourite bird, given the stellar performance of Nando’s in which he’s a major investor. It has now spread to 32 countries and has 234 branches in the UK and Ireland alone. Offering peri-peri chicken in various formats, Nando’s has taken SA-Portuguese poultry around the world. How much longer before Spier, one of Dick’s other investments, makes a Vino Verde-style zippy and zaftig petillant white which will drain the lake of unsold SA wine faster than you can say Maria Gomes.

John Lanchester, author of The Debt to Pleasure and a brilliant summary of the short future of deadtree newspapers, has written a review of Nando’s in today’s Guardian. For starters, when did you last read a review of a chain restaurant in local deadtree pages. Oh sorry, local food writers are notorious for blagging free meals for themselves and their partners in exchange for “coverage” and maybe chicken burgers are not aspirational enough for these Clement Freuds of Freebies.

With SA wine exports in dire need of new direction, perhaps Nando’s can be the Trojan Chicken for exports into the EU. After all, Dick can supply peri-peri Chickens for Africa given the WOSA spittoon brimming with R38 million of marketing moolah.