Restaurateur ‘Hit the Jackpot’ When He Kicked Out Nasty James Corden

Banning James Corden has more benefits than simply the joy of banning James Corden, according to restaurateur Keith McNally. Publicly humiliating the former late-night comic also vaulted McNally into the social media stratosphere.

Here’s a reminder of what happened back in October 2022: McNally “86ed” Corden from future visits to his New York restaurant, Balthazar, as punishment for the “funny man’s treatment of my staff” over multiple visits. In a lengthy Instagram post, McNally accused Corden of being “extremely nasty” to a manager, “yelling like crazy” at a server and earning the dishonor of being “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.”

In the aftermath of terrible publicity and Instagram vitriol, Corden apologized on national television. While he explained his side of the story, Corden confessed that “the truth is I made a rude comment. And it was wrong. It was an unnecessary comment. It was ungracious to the server.” 

After the mea culpa, McNally immediately rescinded the ban from his restaurants.

But before you give McNally too much credit for stepping up for his staff (as he’d previously told Page Six), he acknowledges in his new book, I Regret Almost Everything, that the public rebuke was really a scheme to gain Instagram followers, as reported by People. “By exposing Corden’s abuse, it appeared as though I was defending a principle,” McNally confessed, “when all I was doing was seeking the approval of my young Balthazar staff.” 

The post, in which McNally called out Corden as a “tiny Cretin of a man,” blew up, earning the owner tens of thousands of followers. McNally knew he had “hit the jackpot.”

“Corden called me four times the day the post came out, each time asking me to please delete it. On the last call he sounded desperate,” McNally writes in his book. “Relishing my hold over someone so famous, I told him I wouldn’t delete it. Like a little dictator, I was intoxicated with the power I’d received.”

McNally its he didn’t see either of the incidents he described in the post, taking his staff’s word about Corden’s abusive acts. To be fair, Corden acknowledged that he’d behaved badly.

From there, McNally flip-flops back and forth on his feelings about the incident. On the one hand, “it now seems monstrous that I didn’t consider the humiliation I was subjecting Corden to,” McNally explains. “I’m not suggesting Corden didn’t deserve the backlash from my post. (The bastard probably did.) I’m just saying I didn’t see the incident I wrote about that, to some degree, jeopardized his career.” 

On the other hand, McNally calls Corden a “gift from heaven” — the Balthazar owner had previously struggled to make traction on social media until his accusations garnered him a new legion of followers. 

Kudos to McNally, I guess, for coming clean about his less-than-scrupulous intentions. The incident is yet another that proves, at the end of the day, everyone is a wanker.