Life and sole of the party

Like a gentleman heading for supper at his London club, the assuredly aristocratic Dover sole enjoys a quiet life and is best served simply, says an adoring Tom Parker Bowles

- Tom Parker Bowles

YOU may expect the Dover sole, that most regal and magnificent of fish, to live a suitably adventurous life. You know, blessed with the mighty tenacity of the salmon or eel. Or, at least, possessed of the mackerel’s pelagic pizzazz. Yet no, this assuredly aristocratic flatfish lingers rather than lives it up, spending all day long doing not much at all. A gentle potter through the mud or stroll across the sand or shingle, perhaps—but nothing as vulgar as hard work.

By night, things get a little more active, as it scours the seabed for worms, prawns and anything else that will fit in its gob. Not dissimilar to your average gentleman on his way for dinner at Wiltons or White’s. But really, his is a life of relative indolence. No swimming the wrong way up roaring Scottish rapids for him. Or floating, unformed and helpless, from the wide Sargasso Sea.