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Charles Barrier (b 1916) is the chef-patron of the restaurant at Tours that bears his name. He is one of the great names of nouvelle cuisine, but at 67, in December 1983, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to six months in prison. His crime, in the words of the International Herald Tribune, was to ‘pick up restaurant bills that his guests had paid and then discarded, usually on the table, when they left. He then destroyed the bills and failed to record the amounts in his records.’ Foodies were stunned that a charge for this very common practice should be brought against such a hero.