Whenever the folks at the National Lottery hold a lunch to celebrate a new season of their Winning Streak game show, they choose a special guest who they feel is on their own personal winning streak. Chefs Paul and Jeanne Rankin of Roscoff's restaurant in Belfast were the chosen ones for Tuesday afternoon's gettogether in the Old Schoolhouse Hotel on Northumberland Road. "Mind you," one PR woman murmured to Paul, "If we'd known about Sonia O'Sullivan we should really have booked her."
Still, Paul and Jeanne are easy qualifiers in the winning streak category. Paul can hardly remember all the pots they have on the boil at the moment - there's a new Roscoff cafe opening in Belfast; a plan to make Gourmet Ireland hampers which will offer the local produce featured in the TV series of the same name; the ongoing management of Roscoff's itself and of course, the TV shows Ready, Steady, Cook! and The Rankin Challenge.
In answer to the obvious question about the TV shows, Paul grins and says: "Yes, mistakes and problems do happen but really, they don't happen often enough. They actually make good television but unfortunately everybody always practises furiously before we come along and it always goes very smoothly. I think the producers are half tempted to stage a few disasters!"
The other big production in the Rankins' life has been the arrival of son Jamie (18 months) to join their two daughters, Claire (12) and Emily (9). On Tuesday, the whole family was just back from a trip to Sicily where Jeanne did lots of cycling and rollerblading and Paul, by his own admission, did a lot of lying around. Mind you, he had an excuse as the poor soul is just recovering from pneumonia.
The Rankins say they'd like to open up a restaurant in Dublin but have not even started looking for a premises yet. In the meantime, we had to make do with Tuesday's lunch - as well as being the guests of honour, Paul and Jeanne were also the head chefs on the day. There was often an empty chair as Paul slipped out to the kitchen from the head table, which included Mike Murphy, presenter of the TV game show; barrister Cynthia Ni Mhurchu and of course the National Lottery director, Ray Bates. It's a cook's life.