The G20's recipe for PR disaster

An FOI request has revealed that G20 conference wining and dining cost £500,000. Can you compose a more frugal menu?
Gordon Brown G20 opening
Gordon Brown with other world leaders at the start of the G20 summit Photograph: EPA

The carving knife that Alistair Darling and his boss are allegedly wielding against public spending hasn't gone as far as their own food bill it seems.

Gordon Brown got Jamie Oliver involved in his attempts to impress the world leaders at the G20 summit last month with our pukka cuisine. Despite the menu being billed as comprising unpretentious British grub, the Independent reported on Thursday that we taxpayers, already saddled with a toxic portfolio of debt from irresponsible banks, have now been stung with a £500,000 ticket for catering at the two-day conference in London that was meant to remedy it all. There was more salami than slicing, apparently: while the 800 aides and officials cost £435,000 to feed, the VIPs got through 136 bottles of wine valued at £6,000 – including a 1986 claret at £140 a bottle and 32-year-old Fonseca port at £137.

Given the circumstances, can't our government do without all these frills? When the menu of the G8 food crisis meeting was leaked last month, the Italian organisers jettisoned its "wine tastings" and changed the wording from "gala dinners" to "working dinners". What would have been more appropriate credit crunch munch for the London G20 summit?

Apart, that is, from "humble pie" (we'll say it so you don't have to). But please share your other cost-cutting recipes for recession fare.