I’ve just done a talk about dyslexia — actually, it was more of a meandering mumble with circular stuttering — to a room full of people who are passionate about it. There were teachers, parents, charity workers, therapists and a couple who thought it was a lecture on Descartes. I’m not going to make any more dyslexia jokes. It’s like Punjabis telling Pakistani gags and gays doing bum stuff — funny, but ingratiating. And nothing is as innately funny as spelling phonetically with a PH.

I was asked by the nice facilitator what dyslexia had ever done for me. I said it had given me a brilliant lifelong excuse not to do things. I’m excused forms. I don’t do phone numbers or thank-you cards. I don’t text. I’m not Sudoku-, crossword- or Scrabble-friendly. And I don’t do quizzes, tests or exams.

There was a little silence, then a couple of coughs, and the nice facilitator said that wasn’t quite the answer he had been expecting. This was a symposium on dyslexia and the arts. What I was supposed to say was how fantastically paintbox talented, poetically rhythmic and musically bat-sensitive we dyslexics are. Dyslexia has gone from disability to different ability. It’s now a synonym for creative. I’ve grown up to be an artistic X-Man, with aesthetic superpowers that need nurturing and may one day save the world.

In truth, of course, dyslexics end up in the art room or the music studio or the drama class after school, because it’s the only place they aren’t special-needs remedial. They get good because they can’t do anything else. We can be every bit as culturally rubbish as you — it just tends to take us longer to find out. I ended up writing about art because I was a failed artist and discovered at the age of 35 that I had the merest talent for words.

But, that said, if I wasn’t dyslexic, I’d be a better writer. “Really?” said the nice facilitator. There were furrowed brows. Sharp intakes of breath. “Really, truly? Wasn’t your dyslexia the spring for your distinctive voice, your hawk-like vision, your marvellous style?” Impossible to say. But I do know that not being able to write legibly, understand basic grammar or being able to read without moving my lips isn’t exactly an unfair advantage when it comes to writing. Dyslexia stopped me becoming an accountant or a bookie, a warehouse manager, a contestant on Countdown or a subeditor. So there was a silver lining.

The people who really suffer with dyslexia are parents — mostly mothers, who get hysterical about statementing and special teachers and vivas and computers with coloured screens. They hurry their frightened and guilty children around the small coterie of nice-little-earner experts who repeatedly make them do spatial-awareness tests and talk in quiet, smiley voices.

School is never going to be a place for a dyslexic. The spine of education is words and numbers. But if you can get over the English bourgeois, obsessive snobbery with hardback reading, and just remember that the vast majority of people who ever lived never read a line of Jane Austen, then dyslexia should be a problem that, while it’s worse than having an annoying laugh, isn’t nearly as bad as halitosis or premature ejaculation. If you’ve got it, get over it; if your kid’s got it, forget about it. You can see why they don’t ask me to talk very often.

“Have you eaten here before?” said the man behind the counter at The Fish Club. “Let me explain how it works.”

Would you? I gave him my biggest, brightest, crinkliest smile. “Well, this here is all fish. We’ll cook that for you, traditionally with batter, or you could have it done another way. It comes with traditional chips and homemade tartare sauce. Or there are other sauces. There’s a selection of starters — potted shrimps and stuff. Over there is a blackboard.”

Ah, I was wondering about that. It appears to have writing on it. “Yes, that’s the menu.” Oh, a menu? On a blackboard? “Yes, you order here, at the counter.” Here? The counter, here? “Yes. Then you go and find a table.” A table? “To sit at.” On a chair? “Yes. And the food will be served to you. It will be brought to you and served to you.” At the table? “Yes.” The food I ordered? “Yes.” Even if it was off the blackboard? “Yes.” Okay. If I forget anything, you’ll remind me? “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.” Thanks.

I never thought I’d have the concept of a fish-and-chip shop explained to me. But there is no irony in the proselytising new commonwealth of English food. Serve tuna in a chippy, and they imagine we’ll be too confused to recognise where we are. I barely recognise St John’s Hill, where The Fish Club lives. Last time I was here, I was a squatting student. I used to drink in the Beehive pub next door, which was grotty with men in donkey jackets and women who thought the pub’s name was a hairdo. Now it’s a bright, open-plan bar full of men in Boden with lean and hungry looks.

This corner of south London is the starting gate for sinewy aspirational couples, who have game plans and realistic life goals and strategies. If it all goes as ordered, they won’t be here next year. There’s a big municipal therapy centre, and all the shops have punning titles and sell things like Pilates workouts and enviable light switches. The Fish Club is the chippy for people who don’t do chippies. And I must say, it’s perfectly nice. Frightfully friendly. I expect the staff are just as blue-sky, out-of-the-box and vertically mobile as the customers, dreaming of chains of nota-chippy chippies all over the Victorian suburbs of the south.

I began with a fish soup that was billed as traditional French. It wasn’t. It had the Mozart fault — too many notes — and had been turned into a sort of ribollita with too much stuff (bread and herbs and aïoli). It was too keen to please. That’s the great secret of French cookery — it never cares if you like it or not. The Blonde’s potted shrimps were a dariole of shrimp slush with too much dill — the wrong herb, evocative of Scandinavia and Russia, not Morecambe.

Haddock and chips were fine — better than fine. Nice bit of fish. But the chemistry and the physics weren’t 100%. The batter was semidetached from the fillet — a thin, oily overcoat. I suspect the temperature was a touch low, and the fat itself was vegetable. Puddings were bought-in ice cream and a rhubarb fool that was overwhipped cream spooned on a lake of badly undersweetened rhubarb. I expect the oil and sugar were due to health concerns, which trump flavour every time.

If I were a young bloke who didn’t fancy cooking, but wanted something good and filling and value for money, then I’d be very happy to have this round the corner. As a destination, its aspiration and good intentions are a few degrees hotter than its talent. It comes from the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall school of inspired amateur catering: the belief that cheerfulness and a concept are the cornerstones of good food. They’re not.

The Fish Club

189 St John’s Hill, SW11; 020 7978 7115 Tue-Sat, noon-10pm; Sun, noon-9pm

Ratings: 5/5 The fisher king; 4/5 Big Fish; 3/5 Fish for compliments; 2/5 Fish out of water; 1/5 Swimming with the fishes

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