I've made colour-coded meals: chef dishes on feeding the rich & famous

It's the third week now that I am jealously guarding, among other things, a kilo of Beluga caviar on the banks of the Chobe River. A Middle Eastern royal family have delayed their trip yet again, by a couple of days. I form part of the largely unseen workforce that caters to the whims and needs of the "elite", that group in society who have their every care attended to and their every wish fulfilled.

I have cooked for them all - Rock Stars, Hollywood Icons, Royals, Global-Stage Politicians, Captains of Industry, Front-Page Crooks, Sports Personalities, Celebrity Chefs, High-Class Hookers and even the first man on the moon ...

Everyone wants to know the eating habits, obsessions, and demands of the rich and famous. The issue is that the rich and famous don't come alone - there is a bevy of assistants, security, nannies, public relations bimbos and drivers.

The elite's uncouth insipidness of entitled assumptions is nothing compared to that of the arduous Assistant/Manager/Pimp/VIP Bodyguard. Their close association with the elite's expectations is burnished on their proletarian upbringing.

Thirty minutes into a lunch service for an African dictator, the bush wriggled alive with camouflaged soldiers, demanding lunch and access to the bar. After quenching their thirst on the imported beverages, they vanished raucously back into the African bush with glassy eyes, engorged bellies and loaded AK47s.

Eight hundred kilometres from Jozi, I set up a restaurant in a dry riverbed - daybeds, tables, French champagne on ice, a Tarzan-style leg of lamb suspended over low coals from a wild fig tree. Three confectionery heirs alighted from a private jet - ate a mere morsel of lamb, sipped some bubbles and left 20 minutes later. No rear end sat on a chair or lay on a day bed and the lamb was parcelled up with the reflective-sunglassed, black-suited security man.

Over the years, I have sourced Swiss chocolates, imported Singaporean orchids, traced Californian almond milk, cooked specific colour food, slaughtered a goat, helicoptered 50 pizzas, arranged KFC on the finest tableware, even blended margret de canard for someone who could not face the taxing task of chewing. I have washed crisp organic mesclun in warm water to temper the "chilly" leaves.

This lukewarm limp salad was not requested by a Captain of Industry, Rock Star or Dictator but guzzled by a 20-something overweight personal assistant at 2am.