I’m just back from an interesting weekend on the Isle of Man – or Shaun of the Dead, as they call it in old Manx. It’s a bit like the Falklands, except that nobody wants it back.

I took my teenagers, because I think it’s important they get an idea of cultures that are different from their own and see remnants of a life that vanished from the rest of Europe decades ago. The Manx language is a distant relative of Cornish. They don’t seem to have had much to say to each other. But there is one bit of Celtic civilisation that is the same from Spain to Stornoway: the porcelain shire horses and china cats put in the window on the street side of the curtains. These secret votive shrines have a meaning that is lost in the mists of couldn’t-care-less, but still, passers-by stop and think for a moment. “Ah, a little old Celtic lady lives here. She has a hearing aid and keeps all her money in a shortbread tin.”

Only the Celts put knick-knacks in windows for the kitschification of strangers. In fact, almost all Celtic culture seems to have revolved around decorative tchotchke. I like to think of them, all woaded up like the Blue Man Group without the jokes, sitting around fire pits eating charred stoat with acorn stuffing, quaffing horns of mud ale, telling sagas of paternity that sound like the Yellow Pages with stabbing, but surrounded by nests of occasional tables and welsh dressers boasting their best china and their collections of ornamental thimbles, pottery frogs, glass fawns and carved shepherds with big eyes. The spirit of the Celts still whispers through the people of Man like a mystical Oxfam shop.

We had the good fortune to be in Castletown (named, I was told by a knowledgeable old denizen with a face like a frayed rope dipped in chicken offal, because there was a castle in the town) for the annual bathtub challenge. The telltale word “annual” hints that they’ve done this agonisingly pointless thing before – and you need to have been on the island only a couple of hours to understand quite how challenged by bathtubs most of the locals are.

It was a wonderful day out for all the family. People of all ages and sexes (and, I’d imagine, similar IQs) floundered on inflated inner tubes, some of them dressed as nuns. Why is it that, whenever teams of amateur charitable blokes get together, half of them have to dress as nuns? And then they took to the water in tin baths, accompanied by Ben Fogle, the mesmerising presenter of Countryfile, who, having rowed the Atlantic naked, managed to come last, allowing the locals a toothless beam of self-satisfaction. “He might be able to stroke James Cracknell, but he can’t get a bath across Castletown harbour.”

By the end of an exhausting and life-draining day, most of the locals were slushy, squelchy piles of sodden nylon. The Isle of Man had done for fun what most of the Midlands were weeping and calling in Sea King helicopters over: in solidarity with drowning England, they had splashed about in holy orders.

And I thought two things. First, wet T-shirt is not a good look for fat, pubescent kids. Second, when clever people steeple their fingers and say, “We’ve forgotten how to make community entertainment these days”, what they hanker for is the grisly horror of bathtub challenges, or cheese rolling, or interpub, no-rules, medieval football played with the effigy of a pope. It’s like some stubborn, pustulant pox that won’t die out. For God’s sake, this is what television was supposed to inoculate us against.

You can probably tell that I’m putting off this week’s restaurant – I wish I had put it off indefinitely. Brumus is the dining room of the recently gussied-up Haymarket Hotel in the West End of London. I went principally because two other hotels – Charlotte Street and Soho – run by this group are both elegant and popular with groovy media types.

But the minute I walked in, I knew that here, the formula had curdled. The idiosyncratic, look-at-me art and decor had all the panache and sophistication of a Bavarian glam-rock show band. The restaurant is dark, but not dark enough. There was an insistent drum’n’bass beat playing in the background. The only other table occupied had the most depressing and dispiriting sight known to public dining: a silent couple avoiding eye contact and a hunched child, his face glowing green from a reflected electric game. The customers may have been mute, but the patterns on everything yelped like homesick puppies in a dogs’ home.

The menu is Italianish, but there wasn’t much I wanted to eat. I opted for a mozzarella, beetroot and avocado salad. I expect the cheese was actually burrata; if it wasn’t, something really unpleasant had been done to the buffalo. Next, I ordered penne with prawns. I ordered it, but I didn’t eat it. The pasta was glutinous Barbie legs cut off at the knee. The tight, hard curls of prawn might have been Pinocchio’s testicles. And it was all sluiced in a bath of tomato acid, and served on a plate that was so hot, it could have fried an egg.

The Blonde asked for something or other that had smoked tuna with a tuna sauce. The waiter said the tuna was off and that they were making it with smoked salmon instead. “But still with the tuna sauce?” “Yes.” “No.” Pudding was a really noxious apricot clafoutis thing.

The service was a flirty-eyed Italian boy who kept murmuring, “Good choice. Very nice. Oh, yes”, as if buying lingerie. As we left, a manager asked if everything was all right: “I couldn’t help noticing that you left a lot of your main course.” Not a lot – all of it. And why couldn’t you have noticed before it got to the table? I smiled. The prices are immaterial, because you’re never going to eat here.

The Blonde asked where the odd name came from. “It was the owner’s dog, which just passed over.” Brumus – named after a dead dog.

Haymarket Hotel, 1 Suffolk Place, SW1; 020 7470 4000 Mon-Sat, 7am-11.45pm; Sun, 8am-11pm
Five stars: Roll in the hay; four stars: Make hay; three stars: Hit the hay; two stars: Haywire ; one star: Hay fever

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