'I do bad taste with intelligence'

Over an anarchic lunch, Mel Brooks wisecracks about everything from the new-found success of The Producers to his wartime high jinks. But the recent death of his wife, Anne Bancroft, has left him bereft. Rachel Cooke Sunday December 18, 2005 The Observer To slip briefly into luvvie parlance, Mel Brooks is what is known as a trouper. This means he always gets on with the job, come sleet or snow, a goonish smile slathered across his face (even if, in some lights, the smile does look more like a grimace). His old-fashioned trouper qualities manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. At one end of the scale, there is his determination to keep working and talking and travelling, even though it is still only six months since his wife of more than 40 years, Anne Bancroft, died of cancer. At the other end, there is his delightful enjoyment of this room, in Simpson's, an ancient restaurant on the Strand, where we are trying - and just about succeeding - to have lunch together.

Mel, and Mel's people, had hoped to bag a table at the Savoy Grill. But nothing doing. So we have come round the corner to this less swanky establishment. The carpets are busy, and the place is packed with office Christmas parties; I can hardly hear myself speak, let alone catch Brooks's hammy burr. To my left, a woman in a sparkly dress has just taken a photograph of her group (I can only give grateful thanks that her camera is back in her handbag when my guest walks in), and later the maitre d' will proffer a laminated menu for Brooks to sign, which he does, even though the Biro skids over it like a glass on a Ouija board ('Don't worry! I can do it,' he yells, gripping the pen with all his might).

But does any of this bother him? Does it hell. 'Isn't this great?' he shouts. I must look blank, because he soon says again: 'I said, isn't this GREAT?' I nod my head vigorously. His approach to dining is as wilfully anarchic as his humour. First he orders some brown toast. Having demolished this, he asks for a cappuccino. Next, a Dover sole, which he would like meunière rather than grilled. When the waiter tells him that this comes with chips, he yelps as though he has been burnt: 'No, no, no!' A compromise is found. He will have potatoes and some savoy cabbage. As for the cappuccinos, they just keep on coming; he drinks them so fast, I fear for his tongue.

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