Can I get you anything, sir? A black eye? A broken jaw? I ask because last week it was announced that some restaurants have stopped adding service to the bill. Why? The law has changed. Restaurants can no longer pocket this money, but must give it to the staff. This has started a tipping debate

To tip or not to tip? This is irrelevant. I always tip. Not because of the service, but because watching waiters wait is fascinating. You may think you are just walking into a restaurant, but if you are lucky, you will also walk into a story. Only a fool reads the menu in Cafe Rouge. Read the waiters instead.

For years I was a part-time waitress. I once worked in a restaurant, with a gay Irish alcoholic manager. I will call him Eric. He was always drinking vodka out of teacups, and was once arrested for stealing the restaurant's entire stock of toilet rolls. The police pulled him over for erratic driving, opened the boot, and discovered the cache of toilet rolls. The owner defended him. "He's a criminal," he told the police, "but he's my criminal."

Eric once attacked me in the middle of the restaurant, and had to be pulled off by a customer. (I can't remember why, exactly; I think I may have commented on his skin.) One of the waiters, who had piles, once attacked my sister – with a mop. He appeared out of the broom cupboard, brandishing his mop, and thumped her with it. I came to her defence. Soon, a whole crocodile of waiters were pushing the waiter – and the mop – back into the broom cupboard. I complained to the owner. "He attacked my sister with a mop," I said. "He's got piles," the owner replied, "What do you expect?"

One of the chefs, meanwhile, was a part-time drug dealer. She once sold me some speed, and I took it, went green, and hid in the broom cupboard, writing an epic love poem about a boy called Julian.

The customers were merely irritants in our daily opera of madness. We tolerated them benignly, like naughty children who, incomprehensibly, wanted things. "It wants an OJ [orange juice]." "It wants a DC [Diet Coke]." "It wants an HB [hamburger]." "What is wrong with it?"

Occasionally, but not often, the customers could be offensive. There was the man who touched my bottom as I walked through the restaurant. I slowly put the plate down and slapped him round the face. "She slapped me round the face!" he screamed at Eric. "He touched my arse!" I screamed at Eric. "Nothing I can do," Eric said, like King Solomon, but drinking neat vodka from a teacup. (How I loved this man!) "You touched her arse." "Yes, I did," said the customer. He gave me a fiver.

Was I a good waitress? Well, it depended on my mood. Every Saturday morning, a nice man called John would come in and give me an ecstasy tablet. I was sometimes even tipped in pills. (I am now, I would like to mention, comprehensively clean – I am on gum.) So, on Saturdays, I was a very happy waitress. "Whitebait?" I would simper ecstatically, as my mad, drugged eyes took in the table of four. For some reason, they always looked slightly afraid.

Sometimes I was a very angry waitress; I would come over with a hamburger, shriek "dead cow!" and throw it down. I was, for a time, in love with the scrawny but mesmerising assistant chef, and when the piles waiter wasn't crying in the broom cupboard we would have sex in it. If he ignored me, I would be intemperate with the customers; if he was kind, I would sprinkle them with bon mots, while they were trying to eat.

There is a restaurant, which I go to with my friend. And there is a waiter there who hates us. His face falls when we walk in, as if he is remembering an ancient wrong. We have a standoff with him. How long until he brings the menu? How long will he leave it this time? How long will he dare? Fourteen, 15, 16 minutes – oh, he's pretended he's just seen us. He walks towards us, looking amazed as if he has never seen customers before. What is this odd new species? Customers! Welcome!

Now the drinks. How long? How long? The entire experience is like an episode of The Krypton Factor. We don't need to think of anything to say; all we talk about is how much this waiter hates us, and why. What is his inner life? What does he think about at bedtime? Then we tip – 15%, or 20% if he hasn't physically attacked us – and leave. It is better than TV. It's a novella.

Say it isn't so, Harriet

Harriet Harman is reported as having "clipped" a car while driving, while talking on her mobile phone, while being deputy prime minister, all at the same time.

Oh, Harriet, how could you, if it is true? (She denies any wrongdoing.) You are our shining deputy prime minister and you remind me of a big, red, human fingernail. How could you wind down your window and say, "I am Harriet Harman, you know where you can get hold of me." (Or so witnesses said.) As in, "I am Elvis." "I am Kylie." "I am Jeffrey Archer." How could you place yourself alongside the bottle blondes in their 4X4s who, babbling nonsense into their mobiles, turn demonic north London postcodes into Death Row every weekday afternoon? How could you? How could you? If it is true. Is it?