How not to start an article

Discovered, today, in The Guardian: the gratingly gauche opening of Will Self's article on Roald Dahl (on the occasion of the release of Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox):

A few months ago, I was coming out of the lavatory at Maison Bertaud, a fusty old patisserie in Soho, when I saw the familiar full-moon face of Simon Callow – actor, playwright, director, indeed all round homme de théâtre – eclipsing the window.

Need I say more? This sentence essentially killed the article for me. "A fusty old patisserie in Soho" my arse!

Of course, alarm bells should have started ringing when I read the article's subheading:

Roald Dahl's children's books are full of barely submerged misogyny, lust and violence.

Well, duh!, Will "Rip van Winkle" Self (or whatever 12-year old subeditor is responsible for this bracing display of le lieu commun). Where have you spent the last two and a half decades? Next thing you know we'll be encountering the path-breaking revelation that Alien is brimfull with Freudian undertones.

Now, who'd have guessed?