I had a memorable encounter some years ago with Nick Green at Athens airport. I was returning from a visit to Naxos; he, as he explained, had been on Hydra. “I have a chum who lives there,” I told him. “Roger Green. Ever met him?” “Yes,” said Nick. “He’s my dad.”

Now the odd thing was that I had by then known Nick for perhaps 12 years, since the time when, aged 18 he had begun work for those excellent licensees Jamie and Charmaine Fowler at The Perch, in Binsey, at the start of a career on the Oxford catering scene that culminated with his managing the Cherwell Boathouse. But never, over that period, had I associated him in my mind with Roger Green, a writer with whom I had enjoyed many happy encounters over two decades, usually in pubs in the company of our mutual friends John Wain and the actor Bruce Purchase.

Roger was the author (under the pseudonym Tiresias) of the classic book – as I judge it to be – Notes from the Overground, inspired by what he saw, heard and thought on his daily commute by train between Oxford and Paddington. This is a delightful book, my copy of which – as is the way with delightful books – I loaned to somebody and never got back.

A few months ago, in an email send to me by Nick from his home in Botswana, I learned that he, too, had now become an author. In this he was following in the footsteps not only of his father but also of his grandfather. David Green was an architectural historian, who wrote the first detailed account of Blenheim Palace.

Soon after, I received in the post a copy of Boathouse to Botswana, which Nick published himself through YouWriteOn.com. (Copies are most easily obtained by going to Amazon.co.uk and typing in its title.) It is an unusual work, part travel book, recounting the author’s work in the tourist business in Namibia’s Skeleton Coast and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, and partly an account of his adventures in the catering industry.

Its immediate inspiration was Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, in which are revealed some of the dirty secrets of the industry. Bourdain is something of a hero of Nick’s. so it was an odd coincidence that he was almost the first person he bumped into when he went to work in Botswana.

I read the book with great enjoyment – in fact read it twice, particularly savouring the parts concerned with people and places I know on the Oxford catering scene.

Learning that Nick was to be in Oxford visiting family, I invited him for lunch in order to congratulate him and catch up on his activities. The Cherwell Boathouse, I suppose, would have been the obvious place to meet, but I chose the Fishes at North Hinksey. This is partly because it was nearer and partly because I had had an excellent dinner there a few days earlier, specially prepared by chef Tim Luff, for which I wanted to thank him. (You can read about the dinner in Limited Edition today.) The meal proved a merry occasion, in large part because we found ourselves chortling over the contents of the book.

Passages to do with the Cherwell Boathouse particularly amused me, including some concerned with various celebrity guests.

We learn, for instance, of a “big argument with Jeremy Clarkson (complete with tight jeans and white shirt) one night when he wants to smoke after the other guests have left. I don’t want to let him, and he demands to see the manager.

“‘I am the manager,’ I explain and he accuses me of being ‘even worse than the Americans’.”

Nick pays an eloquent tribute to Tony Verdin, who has owned the Boathouse since the mid-sixties. He calls him “the best employer I ever had in terms of total support”.

“Knowing that he was behind me 100 per cent gave me such a lift in difficult situations. Anyone claiming to be Tony’s best friend in a dispute, demanding that we phone him, I’d say ‘yes, let’s phone him but I can’t imagine he’ll be too happy to hear from us at 10pm.’ Even the next day after Tony had spoken to his friend, he’d come and check my story and stand by me, mumbling something about ‘probably wants a free meal’, or ‘maybe he’s having trouble with his wife’ or ‘yes, he does drink a lot sometimes.”

One group of customers who certainly did drink a lot were members of a college dining club who regularly ate there. Nick writes: “They’re not quite as bad as some of the dining societies who who eat each other’s puke and worse [worse?] but past dinners down in the lower boathouse had definitely involved passing a bucket up and down on the boat lifting pulley-chain with drinks and later on as a portable toilet.”

There follows a long and detailed account of how the group disgraced themselves at a dinner in 1997, after which Tony ordered them out for a time.

The many friends of Tony were dismayed to learn recently that he had suffered a stroke. The good news, relayed to me by Nick, is that he has made a strong recovery.

One of the passages in the book that struck a strong chord with me concerns the allure of Brown’s restaurant in Woodstock Road as it was in its early days.

He writes: “My dad says he remembers me being impressed by the waitresses in Brown’s when I was only eight or nine [he’s 37 now], but what I remember more is Thousand Island dressing on the salad in its wooden bowl and the club sandwich I could barely eat it seemed so big.”

Since he wasn’t, presumably, the one paying, Nick was unaware of what good value meals were in those early days. The 95p price tag for one’s spaghetti, salad and delicious garlic bread remains imprinted on my mind more than 30 years later.

By chance, I ran into some of the waiting staff from the dawn of the Brown’s era at a party a couple of nights after our lunch, at Camera, a new bar and Thai restaurant opening today in St Ebbe’s Street.

I mention this chiefly to provide an excuse to print the photograph above, in which I am having my ‘Michael Winner moment’ with bosses Simon Marshall and Jake Oppon. This was the first time I had met either of these gentlemen whose other Oxford businesses – the Bridge nightclub and Anuba in Park End Street – I judge to be a little out of my age range. Camera, where cooking is in the capable hands of Vichai Wong, of the Bangkok House on Hythe Bridge Street, will, I feel sure, prove much more to my taste.

Perhaps I will take Nick next time he publishes a book. He has another, on Patagonia, well on the way, and a novel with an African and Mexican setting coming after that. Now he is back in Botswana, settling into a new job with African Horseback Safaris.