Oh the horror of dinner parties.

For a start the expression is so loaded with expectation disappointment can’t help but appear on the menu. Nobody even knows how to boil and egg these days but we do all buy loads of glossy cookbooks with close-ups of food which look like they’ve been taken by a one-eyed drunk so we know the sort of thing we should be serving; and as guests we know when our hosts have got it wrong.

So to take the pressure off we instead invite friends over for “supper” which sounds much more laid-back, or if we feel really unconfident about our skills in the kitchen we might suggest to our guests that it’s “just something to eat – nothing formal – just a bite – in fact it’s so relaxed I’m practically comatose thinking about it and I might even forget to get any food in so it’s probably better to eat before you leave the house – that kind of thing.”

Of course the reality is at about four o’clock on the day itself you’ve thrown away the starters which even you couldn’t face eating, and you’re elbow deep in your own regret at even thinking you needed to return the favour to that nice enough but quite dreary couple from Balham who you met at John-In-HR’s civil partnership ceremony. But they’re coming soon enough, along with your good friends Becky and Damian. Well, Becky is your good friend and Damian has moved in with her and so you all have to accept him even though nobody actually likes him and for a LibDem he can get extremely aggressive about the intricacies of the funding structure of the new King’s Hospital sexual health wing on Denmark Hill. Alarmingly, after three years of going out Becky still listens raptly and laughs uproariously when he goes off on one and her friends inspect her closely hoping to be the first to spot the welcome note of sourness and boredom in her laugh which might suggest time to be called on Damian and his awful existence. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Then just so as it doesn’t feel too couple-y you invited that friend of your sisters who’s “ever so easy” but doesn’t eat red meat, fish with their heads on and porridge (just in case you were wondering) and Clive who you can’t really remember how you met and never returns the favour but not infrequently tells you how he’d like to come over for his tea one night.

Needless to say the food is a disappointment, the guests bore you rigid. Even Becky is someone you feel you might have outgrown, they drink everything in sight and leave you with washing up an army of Bosch dishwashers couldn’t cope with. Nobody thanks you apart from Fussy Eater Girl and her email focuses on the porridge she had in Glasgow once which didn’t actually make her throw up and by Monday morning the pain is beginning to fade just in time for Peter and Mad Lulu’s invitation to just-a-little-supper-nothing –much-really on Friday night and ridiculously you even find yourself beginning to look forward to it.

I wrote the following on the morning of Thursday August 7th…

After admittedly only two shows for me at the Edinburgh Fringe, this particular annual jamboree has gone rather well.  My first performance of Chris Neill’s Got A Bun In The Oven was within a few seats of a sell-out and fabulously enjoyable, yesterday’s was instead a little more soggy with only half the number of audience and the atmosphere feeling, if not quite as bad as the weather, then certainly a little damp.

It is strange how every year combines the almost entirely predictable with the ever-so unlikely.  For example, in true festival style I have failed so far to eat a single green vegetable and more worryingly still after a few hours of decent weather as I say the rain has started coming down and in true Midlothian fashion this means incessantly and heavily and lasting for days rather than hours.  Consequently the crowds are thinner and everyone looks glum.

Sadly, if I’d bothered to think about it I could have foreseen this rather than it coming as an unwelcome suprise; what I couldn’t have foreseen was that I would spend an hour after my show chatting over a pint of Guinness about the Swedish way with offal with Britt Ekland, and then watching a video on YouTube of the Scotsman’s chief comedy critic Kate Copstick being blasted in the face with blue paint shot at great speed out of the arse of some burlesque performer.  Something for everyone.

The weekend just gone felt like the first step on the possibly treacherous path to the Edinburgh  Fringe.  Robin Ince’s Book Club has played the Latitude Festival since it began in 2006 and to me our annual gigs in the Suffolk countryside have a stepping stone-like quality to them.  There are photos on Flickr taken two years ago of me reading from Jodie Marsh’s triumphant oeuvre Keeping It Real which I then used in my 2006 Edinburgh show Everybody Hates Chris (Neill).

This year someone I noticed in the audience took snapshots (I’ve no reason to assume Flickr-bound at all) of me while I was reading out from various ridiculous cookbooks which I shall be referring to in this year’s show Chris Neill’s Got A Bun In The Oven (Assembly Rooms from 5th August.) 282 Ways With Salad anyone?

Every year I go to the Edinburgh Festival with, not only the hope that the month won’t be utterly hateful and bankrupting, but that also I’ll do useful things with my acres of spare time.  This hasn’t ever happened in the past.  My pie in the sky plans for 2008 include completing a teach-yourself-Italian course, and, even more impressively I feel, to remember to blog at least once a day so as to make up for the eons of time that normally occur between postings.  I’m not putting money on it.

]]> http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/the-first-step-and-all-that/feed/ 1 chrisneill Reverse of flyer darker pink http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/creating-art-in-a-blond-wig-and-size-14-dress/ http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/creating-art-in-a-blond-wig-and-size-14-dress/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:53:34 +0000 chrisneill http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/creating-art-in-a-blond-wig-and-size-14-dress/ ]]>

Dressed in black poly-cotton M&S frock and scratchy nylon wig, I exhibited myself at the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank on Wednesday. To be more specific, I made a not tremendously convincing exhibition of myself in Marc Horowitz’s The You And Me Show which is taking place there until later this month. I was playing the Queen in a spoof pitch for a BBC 3 show. The idea was deliberately bad, my performance unintentionally so.

Marc is one of those people who sees a potential in the internet beyond playing Scrabulous and viewing limitless quantities of porn. He’s a visual artist who got into comedy somehow and added Dave Gorman-esque japes into the mix (he’s about to make a new film for Sony following the route his signature made across a map of the United States – a project seemingly quirky and arrogant in equal measure). This he somehow brings all together on www.ineedtostopsoon.com site and is a creative soul probably fundamentally different from the kind he would be without the enormity of the internet at his disposal.

Appearing on his show which is broadcast live on www.ustream.tv and then archived to Youtube and his website I not only played her majesty but was a somewhat incoherent interviewee and answerer of questions randomly chosen from a ceramic walrus. I came away no less clear about the whole thing than I was when I went in. But how lovely these people were; Marc has a team of people around him, principally his co-writer Zach Ayers and an UK-based writer called Oliver Guy Watkins. It was unfortunate that we almost outnumbered the audience that turned up. Those that did amble by seemed representative of the punters at the Hayward Gallery on a wet Wednesday afternoon – somewhat international and rather eclectic in nature. So, there was a bemused Japanese tourist called Walter (with alarmingly moist hands) who got roped in as a guest (I’ve a feeling that every Japanese tourist I’ve met in Britain – which isn’t many, I concede – is called Walter), a nice but stalkery German girl, two other girls who laughed and most importantly stayed until the end and random others who came and went. To be fair they were probably hoping for a portion of Anthony Gormley’s fog. The event left me baffled but oddly touched. Maybe that’s the intention?

Right now I’m experiencing that great enthusiasm which comes with thoughts of a new show. In February the future looks shiny and taut of skin. Come the Edinburgh Fringe in August the future will be behind me and time will drag as rainy day stumbles into rainy day and I count the moments away until home time. But right now all seems good.

So: on Monday 25 February at a sensible time in the evening (a short while after you no doubt hear me come a convincing fourth in Just A Minute) I shall be presenting what frankly is too little to be billed as a preview of my new show CHRIS NEILL HAS A BUN IN THE OVEN (CONFESSIONS OF A FORK BENDER). Instead, think of it as a work-in-progress (that phrase combines, I feel, the lofty aspirations of an artist with the honesty that it might all be shit).

Things may be made a little perkier by Dan Tetsell also being on the bill. Not only that but it’s taking place at Lowdown At The Albany, a venue guaranteed to not only always have someone in the pub upstairs you’d be keen to shag but also the smell of sewage wafting about. What’s not to love? Also, it’s at 8pm which is great as that means you don’t need to miss Coronation Street (assuming you live near the top of Great Portland Street, London W1, that is).

See you there. Obviously.

Literally months have passed since I bothered to do a blog.  Finally, the day comes and instead of providing something for them to read, I have put on my special beseeching hat at a particularly jaunty angle and am going to request some assistance…

My putative Edinburgh show for 2008 is currently (and extremely long-windedly) entitled:

Chris Neill’s Got A Bun In The Oven – Confessions Of A Fork Bender`

Everyday of the festival I shall be cooking a meal for my audience: it may be a cake, there might be something awfully offal-based, or I might merely ask them to have a nibble on what’s left of my fingernails. 

However, I need help… 

Cooking is all about the quality of raw ingredients (and so – many critics have kindly have told me over the last few years – is comedy.)  I have plenty of cooking-related yarns, anecdotes, and the rest of it but they’re beginning to bore me already and so if you wanted to share some of yours then that would be great.  Everything, all and sundry food-related really. It could anything from the frankly dull details of your favourite meal to a link to your most adored clip of Nigella Lawson noshing off some kitchen hardware.  Atwixt you might want to let me know your perfect recipe for Yorkshire puddings or you may wish to spill details of terrible meals cooked for potential lovers.  If you have visual evidence all the better.  Listeners on BBC Radio Scotland have been tremendously forthcoming already – there was a brilliant story about Spaghetti Bolognaise-protocol used as the vetting procedure for membership of an ex-pats club in the Middle East, and a splendid contribution from Brian Murray who sent me this piccie of a charming birthday cake created by him and his son for his wife’s birthday.  Brian told me it tasted as good as it looks.  I’ll leave you to decide how to take that.

Don’t feel you can’t chip in with your contributions.  Do you see?  I’m not fussy.  All missives are gratefully received and you can contact me either through this site or at bunintheoven@live.co.uk

Yours, with his pinny on and with his fingers crossed. XXX

]]> http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/lazy-old-blogger/feed/ 0 chrisneill 007[1] http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/92/ http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/92/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:36:47 +0000 chrisneill http://chrisneill.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/92/ ]]>

The article below appeared in The Times the other week. There are probably a number of places across the country this applies to but the moment I read it I just knew it could only truly be East Dulwich.

When I moved here nearly ten years ago people said it was up-and-coming. There was talk of a van driving up the high street soon after with an Alessi lemon squeezer in the back. But it didn’t stop. However, from this unpromising start my London locale has gentrified beyond measure. It’s not all good I must say and like the writer of the article below my heart really sank when I realised The Triad of the estate agency world had opened up shop. Bastards.

*************************************************************

From The Times

October 6, 2007

Foxtons! No! Bang goes the neighbourhood

Janice Turner

The evolution of an up-and-coming neighbourhood happens in five stages.

1) A greasy take-out joint turns into an edgy, postmodern fish’n’chip brasserie, with stark benches and organic mushy peas.

2) Sequined scatter cushions and tea-light holders become available in at least three bijoux new boutiques.

3) A posh butcher and deli open, replacing the cheapo ones bankrupted 12 years ago by Somerfield. 4) You see nine sets of twins in the course of a 30-minute stroll: this does not, as my friend feared, augur the Apocalypse, but the arrival of richer, older, IVF-requiring mummies. 5) Just when you’ve bored your friends about the gastropub, cheese shop, the Saturday street market selling five quid organic olive bread, the “villagey” feel, the “ironic” old-fashioned sweet shop where penny chews cost 23p . . . meanwhile, over at corporate HQ your incipiently groovy ’hood has triggered a flashing green light. Caffè bloody Nero opens. And then a huge swath of high street is covered in builder’s hoardings. “Please, please let it be an M&S food hall!” pants your disloyal heart.

Six months later the covers come off. So what is this treble-fronted glass-plate emporium? The gargantuan Gaggia coffee maker, steel fridges stacked with Perrier and funky Italian furniture suggest a swanky bar. But no, oh God, it’s a “café-style” Foxtons.

So it’s all over then, in these parts, for the young couples with first babies, the teachers or PAs or junior doctors. They had better wonder if they need that second bedroom or prepare to commute from Kent. Foxtons are here to drive up house prices, it’s their avowed intent: their founder Jon Hunt, who this year sold up and pocketed £370 million, liked to talk of “going to war” for his sellers. Foxtons takes a bigger commission than any other agent to flog your house – 2.5 per compared with an average of 1.5 per cent – which it justifies by promising to wring from a buyer the highest possible price.

So they will be raising their chilled Peroni beer at Foxtons to George Osborne’s pledge this week to exempt most first-time buyers from stamp duty. Aha! you have an extra £2,000 in your budget? Well, let’s ratchet up that no-garden maisonette (which you can barely afford) just that little bit more.

On Saturday morning Foxtons foxstrels are handing balloons out to babies with the legend “0 per cent”. Already, their one-time-only start-up offer to flog your house for free has vacuumed up whole chunks of the neighbourhood: they have 250 houses on their books and counting. Their message to all the long-standing estate agents is “you’re dead, look upon our coffee shop and despair”.

“I’ll have a property list and a regular cappuccino,” I say to the estate agent/barista behind the front desk.

“Ah,” says the good-natured, signet-ring-wearing fool. “Not sure how to work this thing.” He fiddles about, scattering Illy grinds, and ten minutes later appears with a cup.

“That’s very good,” I say. “If all else fails you could get a job at Caffè Nero.” He gives me a rather melancholic smile.

Perhaps he was thinking that over the road he might be better paid. When I ask a sales agent why I should sign with Foxtons, he says, straight out: “Because we only pay our negotiators £10,000 a year. They can’t live on that. So you can be sure they’ll work their arses off to get you the best price.” How depressing that these kids could earn – if you take into account their 12-hour-day, six-day weeks – well below the minimum wage.

A BBC Whistleblower documentary last year, in which a reporter went undercover into a Foxtons branch, found underperformers were heckled, the office atmosphere cutthroat as negotiators delighted in gazumping each other to bag a sale. No wonder Foxtons employees have been driven to rip down rivals’ boards or erect their own unbidden. But is a recasting of Glengarry Glen Ross in South London really to anyone else’s advantage?

My husband, who grew up in this area, noted a fourbed house on a so-so street, which once belonged to his schoolfriend – a taxi-driver’s son – on sale for £1.4 million. Even under Mr Osborne’s proposed new allowances, the heirs of this fairly ordinary home would pay a fair wad to the Treasury. Do they too have the right to be outraged that such legacies, such great dynastic sums, won’t be received intact?

It was a masterstroke by the Tories to reject the dogwhistle of immigration for the great bugle horn of property paranoia, the chief angst of our age. Yes, how will our children ever get on the housing ladder, poor things? Well, not by lopping off a couple of grand from their tax bills. So red in tooth and claw, so unregulated is the housing market, it will only disappear down Foxtons’ gaping maw.

And not by awarding our children humungous sums after our deaths. Why will they need a million quid then? They’ll be what, 40, 50, even 60 years old themselves? It is young folk of 23 who need help with a deposit. Which is when parents wealthy enough to do so release a bit of equity in their homes or dig out some savings to help them get started. Which in turn lessens their likelihood of paying death duties.

“You can’t take it with you!” was the cheery preface to a senior spending spree. But that is now exactly what we want to do. This inheritance tax obsession is not about our children, it is about us, our greed, our revelling in our luck; amid a climate of such rapacious consumerism we now fixate on what we own even into the grave. And for this tax break Mr Osborne will have to find £3 billion, not all from nondoms I’d bet – on Question Time he displayed the worried uncertainty of a man who’d done his figures on the back of an envelope – but from those who cannot rely on massive unearned lump sums in middle age.

So Foxtons will make my house worth more. But bang goes the neighbourhood. All the useful shops, the hardware store, the glazier, will go. Chains will suck money from local firms to head offices. The shops will get poncier, the staff will get Notting Hill attitude, like the waitresses in the prissy new tea salon. All I can suggest is that everyone troop into Foxtons every day for coffee. Let’s put them and Caffè Nero out of business in one double shot.

Comment:

The neighbourhood went bang years ago how many overpriced nik nak shops and seven pound a Cocktail bars does an area need. I moved from East Dulwich 3 years ago ,it is full of people who moved from Fulham and Clapham are they surprise Foxtons followed them!

h.campbell, london,

I have been living in East dulwich for over 10 years and I can say that I am gutted at the arrival of Foxtons – it may be the end of the area. What makes the area great is the number of owner managed businesses – unfortunately they will be replaced with bland chains stripping the character from the area as property prices and rents are driven up by Foxtons.

I have not bought anything from Neros, will never go into White Stuff and will happily take a free coffee from Foxtons in the hope that if enough people follow my lead then maybe, just maybe, they will pack up and go home.

Jason Peck, East Dulwich,

Well done – you have very effectively communicated what I was trying to convey on Saturday to a young mum at a kids party in East Dulwich. The view that “I don’t care because I’m signed up with Foxton’s and they’re going to get me loads for my house” is precisely the issue I have with them. The reason I moved to the area 5 years ago was that after 18 years in Battersea I’d had enough of the community being destroyed by greed.Northcote Road was the oldest food market in London and now is full of rubbish All Bar One’s and the like.The problem with pushing up prices is that more and more of the local/original community will be tempted by the over inflated prices and decide to cash in and move out – making way for a more impersonal mercenary breed. Cafe Nero was a shock, White Stuff a disgrace and now Foxton’s – I don’t think it could get much worse – what on earth is going to turn up next week?
I also find Foxtons incredibly devious and some local parents very gullible.Balloons to kids!

Hugh Wahla, East Dulwich,London,

Funny how the arrival of Foxtons and other estate agent chains destroys everything that makes the area good in the first place.

Estate agents shops add nothing to the community and take prime sites that could be used for shops/restaurants/bars etc that are actually of use to people, they also push up commercial rents meaning that independent enterprises cannot afford to get established resulting in chains being the only ones able to afford the rent hence our highstreets are full of pizza express, stada, all bar one etc etc.

Tabitha, East Dulwich, London

I have to say I feel the same about the arrival of foxtons, I spent 6 months wondering what was being built too, and was not happy when I saw what it was.
I still feel the same, however I have been in to check it out pretending to be a customer a couple of times, and although I do not like the way they do business, every time I have been greeted by a very polite and smiling face, which is not the usual reception in an Estate Agency. One of the girls who welcomed me was so friendly that I felt terrible for being so nosey, and so I really take objection to the way you have referred to the young man who served you coffee, it seems very unnecessary and probably completely incorrect. He was just doing his job, and I hardly think him a fool for not knowing how to use that machine, I certainly couldn’t.

Mark Welham, Dulwich,

Although I get the jist of your article – your comments on ‘richer, older IVF requiring mummies’ is ill informed. I have lost 4 pregnancies (3 ectopics) and have no choice about how I will hopefully conceive. I am not rich and do not consider myself old – as for twins…well I would love some …

Kate, London, UK

East Dulwich, by any chance?

Ben, London, UK

Janice Turner’s view of East Dulwich (any resident would recognise the description) is very accurate. Even the chandelier shop is now a posh tea room (though it still sells chandeliers). East Dulwich is a rare jewel in South East London in that it has retained its community feel. But as the corporates and chains move in we’ll begin to lose that identity. Our high streets are turning into soulless, glass fronted vacuums. I mourned the introduction of Foxtons as it could easily have been something more useful – a shop people need. Therefore we’re also grateful that the new East Dulwich Warehouse, a place where the community can gather and sell their wares is about to be launched. I think people power in East Dulwich might eventually make Foxtons think about packing up and moving out themselves.

Jonatha Richards, London, UK

My local Foxtons has become an expensive clothes shop–is this progress?However, in defence of Estate Agents, Hotblack Desiato of Islington gave their name to a character in Douglas Adam’s ‘The Restaurant at the End of the World’.

Dectora, London, U K

Don’t understand why it should be considered ‘good’ to have your money taxed on death, so that a proportion of it can be ‘bequeathed’ to government to squander, rather than to help your own flesh and blood. We already pay enough in direct and indirect taxation with underwhelming results. And isn’t it somewhat fanciful – in support of the argument for inheritance tax – that more neighbourhoods will become ‘aspirational’ and so out of the reach of ‘ordinary people’? Not even Gordon has used that one yet, but he might have to consider it – if all else fails.

anne, bournemouth,

Foxtons is an operation founded and funded by big capital interests who have an eye to privatising the property scene or consolidating a principal interest. That is to say that Foxtons have been doing their best to persuade council property owners to sell. I have had regular letters from them to that effect. They are doing their best to suggest to people that they can offer special advantages, and in the Lottery age many people don t need much persuasion to draw what they will see as an obvious conclusion. The glass fronted emporium with it s Gaggia coffee maker sets up the idea, but the quote you give actually gives the game away. They are, ostensibly, merely agents, and if they are getting you the best price, someone else is getting the worst price. The appurtenances are merely adding to their costs. Furthermore the quote is self-contradictory, because negotiators desperate for a sale does not imply the best price. You will know more about this than I do, but I ll bet they are buying more property than they are selling back on the open market.

Henry Percy, London, UK

So, “Leaving people money cripples society and creates a load of dumb people with money”, according to Messrs Gates and Buffet. Well, most of us are well outside their financial league and consider it entirely reasonable to leave a comparitively modest inheritance to our children, not to “create a load of dumb people with money”, but to make their lives a little easier than were our own.

Tony Adams, Deal, Kent

The 3 billion quid required to fund raising the Inheritance Tax Threshold to 1 million is really small beer to the Exchequer – less than 0.5% of the annual total Government spend, so raising it is not an issue – Osborne could probably find it stuffed behind an old cupboard in the Treasury. As for IHT, you have to understand that it is not just about being able to leave your life savings to your offspring, it is about keeping it out of the grubby, grasping maw of central government.

Richard Marriott, Worcester, England

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have all stated “Leaving people money cripples society and creates a load of dumb people with money”. I feel all estates should be taxed and the higher the amount the more tax.

Frederick, London, UK

After what Foxtons has done in the US there are a lot of Yanks hating Jon Hunt and the British way of doing things. He would be well advised to stay on his side of the pond for pretty much the rest of his life. It is not safe for him to walk the streets over here anymore.

Evan R., Marlton/NJ, USA

Dreams often weave the unbelievably fantastical with the mundane to create seamless logic – a logic entirely unfathomable when you awake.

Last night my subconscious pulled a trick on me of some magnitude. In it I was watching one of those French & Saunders sketches set in a empty white room and whilst watching it I witnessed myself finding it funny.

There I was laughing as one gurned and the other looked deadpan; laughing as one kept saying “comedy partner” and the other looked blank; laughing as one dressed up as something and the other looked browbeaten. Laughing, laughing, laughing.

Of course when I woke up I realised how utterly ludicrous this was. I don’t think I have laughed once at French & Saunders and watching their current ‘best of’ series on BBC1 you are reminded in bite-size if not especially digestible chunks how tremendously unfunny these two are together. When apart they can be brilliant but put them together in the same room and surely the only people laughing are dear Dawn and Jennifer and their agent. All the way to the bank.

When I’ve said this to some people they often point out that “their spoofs are hilarious”. But they’re not – they just look fantastic because the BBC has seen fit to give them as much cash as they like. The set designers, costume makers and make-up artists have been brilliant but in spite of these magnificent efforts French & Saunders manage to drag everything down into a soup of of comedy blather by their dullard scripts. Those who insist on defending them also refer me to their “early work”. A sure sign of desperation: that if something is signposted in the long and distant past the haze on the horizon might be misconstrued as hilarity.

Their continued presence on our TV screens particularly annoys me because while they keep going the BBC quite often rejects other female comedy groups on the grounds of “oh we’ve got one of those.” I know several talented comedians who’ve been rejected with this line but then you consider BBC 3’s Titty Titty Bang Bang and Bearded Ladies on Radio 4 and really wish those executives were as strict as they say they are.

Passing the time last Thursday morning between my weekly turn on Radio Scotland and lunch…

Here I am perched on a stool by the Chinese romance DVDs at the Charing Cross Library killing an hour before I meet my friend Janet for lunch, before spending the afternoon trying to find something to do before I attend some musical soiree at a church in Piccadilly which is something to do with The Guardian and VSO.  Why is it that as a Londoner I can’t think of anything I’d really want to be doing in central London – one of the most exciting cities on earth – for a few hours whereas if I was abroad there would be dozens of exciting prospects.  All I really want to be doing is updating my Facebook status and I can’t even manage that because there are no free unsecured networks I can log onto.  It’s pathetic.

I shall tell you this instead.  After previously moaning about Nigella Lawson serving food which took under four minutes to cook yesterday I was obviously punished by the kitchen gods for mocking a saint of theirs by being on the receiving end of an example of behaviour from the other side of the culinary coin.  I remain fascinated how in the French café I lunched in, where I was literally the only customer, and where there were at least four members of staff that I could see, it took over half-an-hour to produce the croque monsieur I ordered and ten minutes more than that to show up the with the frites. Remember a croque monsieur is a ham and cheese sandwich fried in butter, then topped with béchamel (just what someone of my girth should be eating) and frites are small shards of potato cooked in fat.  The sort of thing a French café can’t be astounded to be asked for, especially when you consider it’s on their menu.  But the time it took to appear you’d think I’d asked them to bone a dozen ptarmigans blindfolded.  With their hands tied behind their back.  I wouldn’t have particularly minded – I’d only gone out for lunch to get out of the way of my cleaner  (no I can’t do my own cleaning that would be ridiculous) – if the sweaty top-lipped South African maître d’ hadn’t refused to acknowledge that anything might be slightly wrong and obsequiously brushed away my queries.

I didn’t order a coffee (only because I needed to be in Camden for nine pm) but while he was checking with me for the second time that I didn’t want “anything hot to complete the meal” he unexpectedly became rather keen to explain what had gone wrong.  Nothing as far as I can see.  Apparently it had bugger all to do with ineptitude in the kitchen but rather the phone had rung once with an enquiry about a waiting job that had been advertised and someone else had brought in their cv.  Talk about inundated.  (God only knows what would chaos might ensue if there was more than one customer to serve.)  Apparently most of the job applicants are “all those Africans who can’t even speak the Queen’s good English”  - quelle horreur indeed – and lunch finished on the deeply unappetising note of a white South African doing impressions of black Africans asking for a job.  I suspect this chap is always quick off the mark when it comes to an opportunity for one of these performances; it’s just a shame he can’t chivvy the kitchen along when it comes to sarnies.

I watched Nigella Lawson’s new tv show last night where she makes food very quickly by opening tins and packets and sprinkling grated chocolate on the contents.

In the old days when my straight male friends rather fancied the fat Tory chancellor’s daughter I too used to like Nigella. Like most people I enjoyed watching her ooh and aah over roast chickens and pies and puddings, stews and soups; I loved the way how she talked about how she was the greediest person she knew and couldn’t stop eating and yet had the figure of a streamlined Marilyn Monroe; I loved the way she felated wooden spoons and other kitchen equipment (although thankfully not the Moulinex on full speed) and I simply adored the way there was always time in the show to demonstrate how la Nigella puts on lipstick and how her shoes are an utter and terrible muddle but somehow the Minolos are always on top. Then of course the guests arrived as seen through the wistfulness of a Vaseline-smeared lens and they all laughed and noshed off the tableware and talked about lipstick and shoes and how fat they all were. It was spellbinding.

This new series seems to have lost the magic somehow. For one thing Nigella doesn’t now look like Nigella. Not simply because she’s older but because she moves about. I realise in the past we never saw our hostess do much in the way of shifting her arse. There was the occasional arm lifting up to crush the oozy, creamy slice of cake into her pouting lips and she would – when necessary – slide a bowl along the counter all the time talking about how she likes saving on the washing up as if we’re expected to believe that when tea was finished her kids rushed into the front room to watch EastEnders while she had not only the dishes to do but had their packed lunches to make as well. Probably with a JPS hanging from her lips the while.

In this new series, we are invited to watch her as she exits Sloane Square station for no obvious televisual reason, how she rides an old London routemaster bus (curious indeed as no one else living in London can) and I sat there slack-jawed with excitement while a excruciatingly bizarre scene played out of her picking up her strange Tadzio-type son from a swanky mews house, bundling him into a cab, and then softly chiding him for not doing his homework. She explained somewhat mysteriously that it wouldn’t take him long as she was cooking a three-course lunch for six and that would only take half-an-hour. Do you see. We then jumped to watch freaky little Tadzio skateboarding around the street outside his mum’s house in Eaton Square in his pink drainpipe jeans just like any other kid, apart from the fact that it was in the most expensive square in London and it’s just occurred to me that he’s the spit of that odd boy with the hair like a blond walnut whip who used to turn up on shows like Wogan in the 1980s and talk about antiques and is now a woman called Margueritte or something and runs a firm selling dog cleaning products from near Godalming.

But mostly, the problem with this show is that the food looks vile. She fried a steak which is fine but then served it with what looked like a pound of tile grouting; her Thai chicken curry slopped about like watered down stew and was the colour of the National Theatre in a downpour. Her chocolate mousse had all the allure of a Sarah Lee cake. Why would anybody want to know how to make this gunge? Let alone eat it.

I presume the idea is that for those people who live on prepared meals here is a way of spending the same amount of time as you would on removing some packaging, pricking the cellophane and slinging your frozen lasagne in the microwave but you produce something delicious and homemade instead. Sadly, the results aren’t remotely convincing.

Why don’t you come over to mine where you can watch me riffle through my collection of old Camper shoes, then rub Camomile lotion into my currently rather flaky and sunburnt ears before I astound you with a feast of beans on toast? Ooh tempting.