Sorry, Joaquin, it might work in Hollywood but a virtuous vegan life is impossible for busy Londoners

I met Joaquin Phoenix once — nice bloke, laughs a lot, not as intensely brooding as he seems on screen. Maybe that’s why his Oscar speech hit so hard that I’m still mulling it over, nearly two weeks later. “We take her milk, that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal,” he said. “It’s true, Joaquin,” I think, as I lift my cereal spoon to my mouth in the mornings. “We really do.”

A journey in the general direction of veganism is beset by obstacles. I’ve been on my own meandering vegan voyage ever since I read up on the climate crisis and concluded — as any rational person must — that we all need to drastically cut back on our consumption of animal products. Like, now.

Often, however, I’ll open my mouth, intending to speak up for animal rights, or against deforestation, say, and find there’s a delicious cheese toastie already stuck in there, muffling my words.

So Joaquin is right to be disappointed. And The Vegan Society seems to have given up on us feeble flexitarians altogether. Its guide for employers, released earlier this week, was mainly intended to protect the existing vegan minority — an estimated 1.6 per cent of the UK population — from persecution in the workplace. Start by giving them their own shelf in the office fridge. It wasn’t a much-needed handbook to help the rest of us through the necessary lifestyle change.

By rights, London should be at least 50 per cent vegan by now. If you can’t do it here, where can you? Well, Brighton perhaps, which was recently named the UK’s most vegan-friendly area. But London is within the Riverford Organics delivery area. We also have easy access to corner shops stocked with non-dairy alternatives (oat milk in Zones 1-2, soya-only out in the sticks), and a huge array of options for dining out.

Last night, for instance, I celebrated a friend’s birthday at The Spread Eagle, “London’s first 100 per cent vegan pub”, and because I ordered the burger — the Club Mex Cheezeburger with tempeh bacon and annatto mayo — I was satisfied and didn’t even have to swing by McDonald’s on the way home.

But sadly, veganism is rarely so conducive to London living. Who, in this time-poor, kitchen-challenged city, has the energy to faff around with a celeriac after a 10-hour shift? The hustle is hard and everybody longs for calorific oblivion. Also, sorry, but a cup of tea without cow’s milk isn’t a proper cuppa.

So while, as my Spread Eagle ex-perience shows, plenty of good, greasy work has been done in the realm of plant-based fast food, junk food, and processed comfort food, there’s a way to go. That’s because the barrier to a 100 per cent vegan London isn’t practical, it’s cultural. Veganism must lose its off-putting associations with a specific sort of lifestyle and a particular politics.

Perhaps that was The Joker’s greatest prank: turning a peace-loving Californian hippy like Joaquin into the hero of MAGA-cap-wearing conservatives. Now veganism must similarly transcend the culture wars. Is there such a thing as seitan “gammon” yet? There should be.

#MeToo must rise above girly squabbles

The verdict in the Harvey Weinstein case isn’t just about one man’s future. It’s also a “Where now?” moment for #MeToo. The jury is deliberating at the time of going to press and it’s no coincidence this is going on at the same time as a public spat between two of #MeToo’s most high-profile figures. When Natalie Portman wore a cape to the Oscars that was embroidered with the names of snubbed female filmmakers, Rose McGowan called it a “type of activism [that’s] deeply offensive to those of us who actually do the work”. Portman responded with a veiled dig at McGowan’s decision to take a settlement, in relation to a case of alleged sexual harassment, instead of testify against Weinstein in court.

A somewhat apologetic tweet from McGowan earlier this week looked like the end of it, but it’s only the end of the beginning. There are going to be legitimate tactical disagreements among the members of any movement for change. And if those members are women, these disagreements are likely to be framed as schoolgirl squabbles.

These are grown women, but in the context of a struggle with an industry that’s employed many of them since childhood, it’s likely that they’ve all made decisions they subsequently regretted.

The best hope for the future of #MeToo is to keep listening, yes, but keep talking too.

Try a trailer

Who needs to go to the cinema when you can get everything from watching the trailers on the sofa? Take new comedy Like A Boss, out tomorrow. It brings together Girls Trip’s Tiffany Haddish, Bridesmaids’ Rose Byrne, Legally Blonde’s Jennifer Coolidge and Billy Porter in a fable on the havoc capitalism can wreak on female friendship. It’s light on laughs, and the moral can be summarised as “breast size is proportionate to business acumen”.

But still. It’s important to enjoy the trailer, especially when you suspect the film will be rubbish.