Candles, silk dressing gown ... Nigella’s gone all Mrs Robinson
LiKE a saucy sixthformer at St Trinian’s, La Lawson was simmering, pouting and sighing fit to make a strawberry tart blush as she launched Nigella: At
My Table (bbC2).
Every line was delivered as if it was X-rated, and most of them were. ‘i just need to wait until the meringue is forming Firm Peaks,’ she growled, with a smouldering sidelong stare, ‘and then the bit i really enjoy... which is Roughing it up a bit.’
She seized a chicken, and donned a pair of black latex rubber gloves, snapping them at the wrist. This was turning into Confessions of A Celebrity Chef. The gloves, she claimed, were ‘to stop myself getting frostbite’ when she handled the frozen peas. A likely story.
When she couldn’t think of anything suggestive to murmur, nigella lapsed into italian. ‘Al forno!’ she breathed, in a gina Lollobrigida accent, as she popped her pudding in the oven. (‘Al forno’ might sound pornographic, but it just means baked.)
At one point, she changed into a silk dressing gown to show us how to cook her ‘emergency brownies’. Candles twinkled in the soft-focus background, and nigella sat on the stairs, licking chocolate off her fingertips. it had all gone very mrs Robinson.
‘i want pleasure,’ she groaned. ‘i want flavour and i want ease.’
but all this frustrated lust is just a come- on. What miss Lawson really wants is for us to admire her magnificent kitchen, and envy her.
Her lustrous wooden worktop is bigger than those in most restaurant kitchens. Clear away the bowls and blenders, and there’s room on that surface for a game of five-aside football.
Leading us coyly into her walk-in larder, she proudly displayed the vast shelf set aside for chilis and spices. Even that was nothing, compared to her storage cupboard for oddities and implements — such as the crepe grill that, she boasted, had never been used.
All this equipment ought to produce spectacular dishes, but the truth is nigella may not be a very good cook. She’s all purr and no bite.
using a grand spiraliser, she made a plate of fried potato squiggles that appeared greasily inedible. For breakfast, she recommended eggs poached in water that was not boiling — it looked like a recipe for salmonella. but her centrepiece platter would probably have found favour among the dinosaur detectives of Inspector George Gently (bbC1). it’s easy to imagine them tucking in to supermarket chicken and frozen peas in a transport caff, circa 1970.
This was martin Shaw’s last appearance as the incorruptible old copper, the hardbitten avenger sent from London to clean up geordieland. This series has always had strong parallels with the classic 1971 british gangster movie get Carter, in which michael Caine plays the dirty angel from the big Smoke.
The final episode became a full-blown homage, as gently battled corrupt businessmen and politicians in his hunt for the killer of a teenage girl who wasn’t as innocent as she appeared.
At the climax, it was a straight replay. A sniper hired by the shadowy powers-that-be gunned down the hero on a deserted stretch of bleak beach — though it only took one bullet to fell Caine, and gently needed three.
This was a cut above the average george gently mystery. All it lacked was britt Ekland as the treacherous gangland moll.
in the movie, britt handles a sports car’s gear lever in a most improper manner, and behaves very racily on the telephone. Who could match her sultry tones? Perhaps they should have asked nigella.