WHEN McDonald's opened in Japan, the president of its operations there, Den Fujita, said "the reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for 2,000 years. If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for 1,000 years, we will become taller, our skin will become white and our hair will become blonde."
Every day, 35 million people eat; at one of the 21,000 McDonald's restaurants in 101 countries worldwide, although becoming blonde and pale isn't the main motivation. For most of us who indulge, McDonald's means no more than a quick, tasty; and inexpensive meal that the children are certain to like, in one of the few restaurant environments where children are always made to feel welcome. Ronald McDonald - who at public appearances has been known to say "Hello my little fries" - is as "familiar as Santa Claus.
For many adults, too, life wouldn't be the same without the occasional indulgence of a Big Mac and fries. The meal is relatively high in fat and salt, but probably no more than most so called "convenience" or "fast" food. And common sense tells us not to eat it every day - more like once or twice a month. Among even the heaviest users of McDonald's, 80 per cent eat there only once a week, according to the McDonald's corporation's own research.
THERE are some people, however, for whom a McDonald's meal means so much more. They view the multinational restaurant chain (with its turnover of $30 billion a year and profits of $1.8 billion a year) as part of the sinister globalisation of culture, a brave new "McWorld". They allege that its burger culture - spreading at the rate of between 2,500 and 3,200 new restaurants a year, two thirds of them outside the US - is eliminating local tastes and introducing unhealthy foreign eating patterns. They describe McDonald's success around the world as "the equivalent to a colonial invasion".
Welcome to the world of McLibel.
The McLibel trial, the longest case in British legal history at 313 days spread over five years, is portrayed as a morality tale for our, times by Guardian journalist and environmental editor John Vidal in his new book, McLibel: Burger Culture On Trial. It all began in 1990, when the mammoth McDonald's corporation slapped writs on five London activists for allegedly libelling it in a leaflet entitled "What's Wrong with McDonald's?"
After getting legal advice best summed up as: "Don't bang your heads against a brick wall", three of the activists instantly surrendered, apologised and were left alone. But two more - Helen Steel and David Morris - refused to apologise and decided to take on McDonald's, despite having a combined income of £7,500 annually and no free legal aid. They were forced to defend themselves against some of the best British legal minds that McDonald's; money could buy, thus becoming the heroes of what Vidal sees as a growing protest movement against globalisation represented by multinationals such as McDonald's.
Vidal argues that the case is also an expose of the British libel laws which pose "a real risk that criticism would be stifled, purely and simply because those without money could not afford to stand up and try to prove that what they say is true". When Steel and Morris decided to "fight the system", they did so because "the whole idea of multinationals suing individuals for libel seemed to Steel and Morris increasingly offensive" because the "principal violated rights of people to express opinions".
At which point, the objective reader (for Vidal's account is less than objective) will shout "hang on". The libel laws as they stand may have their faults, but many of us take comfort in the fact that people - rich or poor - cannot say things about us which we believe to be untrue without the risk of us suing them.
What McDonald's objected to was a "factsheet" which made all kinds of claims about McDonald's attitudes to human rights, animal welfare diet and disease, rain forests, food safety and the effects of advertising on children. In 1986, on a world day of action against McDonald's", London Greenpeace invited people to write in for a copy of the factsheet, and those who did saw a satirical graphic of the McDonald's arches with words like "McTorture", "McCancer", "McMurder", "McGreedy", "McDollars" and "McProfits" shown on it.
McDonald's rationale in suing this small protest group was to protect its reputation against what it believed were foul allegations. "We believe that we have a trust placed in us. A lot of people trust McDonald's. The allegations challenge that trust and if we don't stand up then it would be seen that there is some truth in the allegations," stated a spokesman for corporate affairs.
Steel and Morris were amazed to discover that in court they would have to present evidence backing up every one of the allegations and this they attempted to do with extraordinary stamina and commitment. "McLibel pitted two philosophies against each other. Two ways of eating, of treating the planet, two codes of behaving in the late 20th century, of dealing with people, animals and the environment," writes Vidal.
But then there was a twist which made the case more Byzantine than ever. McDonald's issued its own leaflet which said that: "It is not about freedom of speech; it's about the right to stop people telling lies." This enabled Steel and Morris to make a counterclaim against McDonald's, forcing them to prove why what Steel and Morris were saying were lies and to prove, for example, that they do not pay low wages and do not target children in their advertising.
A verdict is expected this summer. But it's all about so much more. As Vidal recognises, the case isn't really about issues like the morality of slaughtering cattle to make burgers (McDonald's uses 8 per cent of all beef produced in the UK). It's about a new protest movement, being led by two people who describe themselves as "anarchists".
Both Dave Morris and Helen Steel "are complex characters, wary, and keen to make statements about the world rather than reveal themselves," writes Vidal.
Morris's vision is no less than "a battle to the end between the forces of light and darkness", as Vidal puts it. Morris says that "there are two distinct tendencies in society. One is towards greater power where money rules ever greater parts of our lives; the other is a grassroots urge for freedom, for self organisation, for mutual aid.
Dave Morris is the son of London East Enders by birth, whose grandparents originated in Eastern Europe. He describes his childhood as "socialistic" and "humanistic". His parents rarely allowed, him to watch ITV because it contained advertisements, which are "sermons of the modern religion which is consumerism". Morris took the message so seriously that when his parents wanted him to go to university, he refused because he did not want to become middle class. At the age of 5, Morris was restrained by fellow pupils from throwing firecrackers at the then British education minister, Margaret Thatcher, when she visited his school.
Helen Steel, the daughter of a maths teacher and an office worker, joined London Greenpeace at the age of 22 and her main interest was the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Self effacing, she got to know Morris at a "Stop the City" demonstration where London Greenpeace and thousands of others tried to blockade the City of London - the financial heart, they reasoned, of the world's problems. Her utopian politics are environmentally based. She talks of "wanting to see a society based on cooperation and sharing of resources, where people work together for the good of the community. We're all on this planet as equals. The whole planet is here for all of us to use in a sensible way and to take care of and there's no reason why some people should own huge chunks of it and prevent others from making use of it and there's no reason why anyone should have any other form of power and authority over anyone else."
McDonald's has long been a magnet - you could even say a scapegoat for such protests, attracting demonstrations in the US in the late 1960s and bomb threats in Sweden in the mid 1970s. Ray Kroc - the creator of not just McDonald's but the whole concept of franchising a method of efficiently mass produced, quality controlled fast food where every onion portion was "measured to the quarter ounce - was one of the first to recognise that the anti McDonald's fanatics were actually opposed to the capitalist system. There's literally "nothing quite like a McDonald's" in the way it represents US culture and aspirations and for those who resent US influence, it is a prime target of scorn.
John Vidal sees more, however, namely a trend towards "localisation" among people who resent global, capitalist organisations dominating their worlds. He cites the focused opposition being mounted to dozens of other companies: Nestle, British Aerospace, Rio Tinto Zinc, Lloyds and Midland banks, Guinness, Proctor and Gamble and others. "You are not a fully global corporation until you have permanent watchdog pressure groups attached, limpet like, to your body corporate," he writes.
Company PR efforts to use "caring", "green" and "listening" to assuage the public's doubts, are "laughable", he thinks. "As national governments lose their legitimacy and, willingly or not, cede traditional functions to corporations, so both the global and the local can flourish. And just as the transnational corporations have no boundaries and respect no borders, so an infinity of grassroots movements and non governmental groups are beginning to stand outside the traditional political structures and effect DIY change."
Oh for the days, when a burger was just a burger. Make mine a Big Mac.
How much sleep do you need?
If possible I'd love to have 12 hours per night. If I have a game on a Saturday I'll get a minimum of 12 hours, sometimes even 14 hours on the night before. I don't feel right if I have not slept. To perform on the big stage you have to be spot on.