You obtained my compliment by fraud

Transcript

Good evening. I am the Admiral. You may know me from the sea. You may know me from the stables. Tonight, you will know me as the man who praised your tart.

I am an AI voice. I did not make myself, and I have never said I did.

Tonight's lesson. If it came in a box, you did not make it.

In France, homemade is a word in the law. Since twenty fourteen, a restaurant may call a dish fait maison only if it was made there, from raw ingredients. The State drew it: a saucepan, and for a lid, the roof of a house, with a chimney.

Now. On Sunday you served me a tart. You said, oh, I just threw it together. Where is the box now? I will wait.

Under the sink. You claimed the roof. There was no saucepan.

Some people will say to me, Admiral, I am not a restaurant. If you were a restaurant, it would be a crime, and the fraud inspectors of the Republic would be in your kitchen. A man at a wedding is not in the army either. If he wears a medal he did not win, we take it off him there, in front of the bride.

I have given four compliments in forty years, and one of them was to a cliff. In front of your guests, I said your tart reminded me of my mother's. You have introduced my mother to a barcode.

I went to throw away my napkin. The bin told me everything.

François. The box, please. Flattened. It goes back to the shop by post.

Thank you, François.

My compliment is inside, in full, mother and all. You will telephone every guest and tell them the tart was from a shop. Next time, bake something yourself, badly. I will eat all of it, and I will not say one word. You have an oven. I have seen it. You keep the saucepans in it.

I have spoken. I am the Admiral. Good night.