THERE are Asian weddings and then there are ASIAN weddings.

One of my biggest gripes in recent times has been the lack of traditional Asian weddings taking place.

By ‘traditional’ I mean where the bride and groom’s cousins and friends have tthe duty of serving the food.

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With people becoming lazier or richer or both, we have seen the death of the wedding where a thousand people would turn up and expect to be fed within the first hour.

It doesn’t happen anymore.

The role of the amateur waiter has been taken up by a team of the semi-professionals and now it is all about sitting down and getting fed on a round table with cutlery and all the trimmings.

When I was growing up - and as recently as five years ago - I was called upon to help serve the food at an Asian wedding.

If you were a boy it made you a man.

If you had never experienced pain, you did now.

Yes, there are those who hated it.

There are those who moaned constantly at the workload.

You served 50 trays in an hour and the people kept on coming.

No matter how hard you worked, you were still a worthless piece of nothing.

In fact, at this point I suggest you put on the theme from the Magnificent Seven and read the rest of the this column from the beginning.

That is the perfect theme tune to accompany serving Asian food at any Asian wedding.

You began with 23 eager volunteers but in the end only a handful would remain as, one by one, the helpers were shot down.

Either they made a run for it or, shamefully, thought the job was beneath them.

They simply couldn’t take the snide remarks from the ‘big-boned’ ladies, the lack of etiquette from guests, the constant fear of running out of food, the stream of guests - some of whom weren’t even invited - and, most of all, the stares of discontent from the slightly elder cousins on the main desk.

It didn’t matter who you were.

I saw many a doctor and smart-talking lawyer find themselves picking up half-eaten chicken pieces from the floor and then being told they were no use to anyone.

At one wedding we had 19 sittings with 2,000 guests and ended with 111 bin bags.

That was a good day.

I miss it so much.