Timothy McVeigh asked for ice cream, others want a can of Coke. And it’s not only killers who are so unimaginative in their choice of a last meal on earth
Where death is concerned I am with Woody Allen: I’m not afraid of it; I just don’t want to be there when it happens. My desire not to dwell on the subject is regularly undermined, however, by the number of people who ask me what my death row meal would be. My fear is that they are fantasising less about my food choices, and more about me being locked away in a cell contemplating a trip to the gallows, for crimes against self-control.
Personally, I think the interest is misplaced. Yes, there have been a few interesting last meals, especially President François Mitterrand’s humdinger of a blowout before he died of cancer in 1996. The banquet included the song birds ortolan. Mitterrand may once have upheld the laws of the Republic but on the way out he no longer cared. He indulged in the full ritual surrounding the illegal consumption of these birds: drowned in cognac, roasted, then eaten with a napkin over your head so the Lord might not see your sin. Those crazy French.
Related: Last orders
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