Television
An acolyte writes
James Delingpole
Ihope you don't mind,' said my friend Liz, who's in charge of this column, `but we were rather hoping you might do Two Fat Ladies this week. Simon can't get hold of the videos because he's up at the confer- ences. And, well, Jennifer's a good friend of The Spectator . .
Liz, it has been an honour and an unal- loyed pleasure. It may be traditional for the Speccie to be rude about its own (or so the Literary Editor told me, when I mentioned I had a book coming out next year), but I have to say that Two Fat Ladies (BBC 2 Wednesday) is quite the funniest, most inspiring, informative and dementedly bril- liant cookery series I've ever seen.
As the title subtly hints, it concerns the adventures of two fat ladies — Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright who travel the land on Jennifer's Triumph motorcycle and sidecar, dispensing jolly culinary advice to humble, needy folk like the lacrosse team at Westonbirt School.
Preposterous, arch and terribly gim- micky, you might think. And so it is. I don't believe for a moment that the cook at Westonbirt had really fallen ill with flu; nor that it was an accident that their bike ended up surrounded by a photogenic flock of sheep; nor that their spur-of-the- moment sea voyage with a Cornish crabber had not been carefully prearranged (how else did they got hold of those duvet-sized life-jackets?). But since the fantasy world they inhabit looks so much more fun than real life, who cares?
Jennifer and Clarissa hail from a better, happier age, when 'fat' was neither a femi- nist issue nor an offensive, proscribed alter- native to 'differently sized% before `ladies' became the squirm-inducing preserve of oily DJs; and when vegetarianism was a perversion, yoghurt something you ate for breakfast, and a fruity accent a sine qua non for a presenter's career on television.
`Oh my God! Something's struck me!' cries Jennifer, beneath the stately portals of Westonbirt (no common state school nonsense for these grandes dames). `In this day and age they'll probably be vegetari- ans.' Cue a stampede of schoolgirls. `They all look terribly healthy,' observes Clarissa. `They can't be.'
No doubt it was staged — the series bends over backwards to prove how politi- cally incorrect it is — but most of the exchanges between Clarissa and Jennifer seem far too natural and battily off-the-cuff to have been scripted. A remark from Jen- nifer that sharks are 'very evil fish' prompts Clarissa to recall the man she once met in Singapore who charged people for a view of the teeth marks around his head. 'Every- one thinks they're testicles, don't they?' says Clarissa of sweetbreads. 'I once cooked proper testicles in Benghazi,' replies Jennifer.
Though Two Fat Ladies all works very well as St Trinians-flavoured comedy Jennifer singing `Baa Baa Black Sheep' in Latin; Clarissa confiding about her school- days 'I used to smoke a pipe in the nuns' Cemetery' and boasting of her prowess at lax; Jennifer collecting mussels in her hel- met and then worrying about the smell it takes its cooking very seriously.
The problem with most celebrity chefs is that either their recipes are impossibly arcane (Floyd's tricky; Mosimann's beyond the pale) or too fussily bourgeois (Delia Smith), Clarissa and Jennifer pitch their dishes somewhere in between: challenging but feasible; imaginative but not rebarba- tive; eclectic but robust. They address that vast and hitherto ill-served constituency of home cooks who know how to make a roux but need a bit of guidance when it comes to crab-corn-and-coriander fritters.
It's useful to know, for example, that the only parts inside a crab you can't eat are the dead-men's fingers: like most people, I'd always suspected that there were other sinister bits besides. And how invaluable to discover that mushrooms are much improved by a pinch of nutmeg; and that anchovy essence is just the thing to bring out the flavour of your fish pie.
Some of the ingredients, I admit, seemed a mite dodgy. Until now, I wouldn't have dreamt of larding a precious gigot of monkfish with horrid, smelly slivers of anchovy; I've always baulked at coley; and I've tended to follow Elizabeth David's dic- tum that rosemary is too pungent a herb for immoderate use. But I trust Clarissa and Jennifer. If that's what they recom- mend, then I'm prepared to take the risk.
They respect tradition but are not bound by it; they nod towards fashion (Clarissa's beef fillet with ginger, lemon-grass et al reflected the current trend for `Pan-Asian' cuisine) but ignore its sillier excesses CI don't know why people strain sauces,' said Jennifer. 'I supposes it's "refained" '). And they say the sort of ordinary things that you or I might say in the kitchen such as 'I like your pan'.
Jennifer and Clarissa, you are the best thing since unsliced bread. I prostrate myself before your gastronomic altar. I feel honoured, Clarissa, that you once sold me a copy of Ali-Bab; and that you, Jennifer, write for the same magazine as me. Let me prepare for you both my celebrated cas- soulet. Or better still, grant me the plea- sure of joining you at your table. You have become a cult. And I am your most fervent acolyte.
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