At My Table? No, Nigella’s scrummy kitchen is inside this lock-up on an industrial estate
FOR many Nigella Lawson fans, the main attraction of her TV cookery shows isn’t really the food – it’s the desirable Domestic Goddess herself, along with her enviable lifestyle and opulent home.
But as she wafts around her swanky kitchen in a silk robe for her new BBC2 series, At My Table, all is not what it seems.
Although Miss Lawson, 57, drops frequent hints to make viewers believe they are getting a throughthe-keyhole view of her mews house in one of central London’s most fashionable residential streets, the programme is actually filmed several miles away on a film set at an industrial estate.
In the BBC press release for the programme, she even tells of her delight at showing off her newly renovated kitchen, adding: ‘I’m very excited... for you to see the re-done kitchen!’ Her real kitchen may have been re-done, but her fans won’t actually get to see it.
Shots of Miss Lawson winking at the camera as she works in a kitchen that mixes top- of-the range equipment with shabbychic utensils are actually filmed within three flimsy walls in a warehouse in Acton. All the backdrops are false. The plants in the fake kitchen garden are made to sway in a fake breeze from fans, and even books on the shelves are simply a row of cardboard spines.
Viewers could be forgiven for thinking that Miss Lawson lives in one of several desirable London homes shown briefly on screen, but that, too, is make-believe. Instead, she lives in a pink mews house in a cobbled street.
During Monday night’s show, the second in the series, she talks about the importance of her apparently vintage kitchen table, adding: ‘When I moved into my first home, many years ago, before I did anything else, I bought a table. And not just to eat at, but to live around – at my table.’ The camera then shows the table itself, groaning under mounds of dishes – on the film set.
Her recipes are often bookended by cosy domestic scenes as producers do their best to make viewers believe Miss Lawson is at home, including a scene in which she tells how she gave her exten- sive chilli collection its own shelf, which she called ‘the hot spot’. Viewers then see a shelf of condiments back-lit by red lights.
In one shot, she is seen in a nightgown on the stairs, apparently in the middle of the night, bemoaning her battle with insomnia.
Another shows her curled up on an old leather chair by a book shelf filled with dusty old tomes, reading from a cookery book.
Last night the BBC said there was not enough space in her real kitchen for filming. But a spokesman added: ‘It is very much the essence of her house. The kitchen is based on Nigella’s and the utensils are her own. In episode one, she opens a cupboard and things fall out. Those are hers.’
This isn’t the first time she has been drawn into a fakery row.
Ten years ago, in her series Nigella Express, a bus trip to the shops was found to have been taken in a hired bus filled with extras, and five years ago, her series Nigellissima was filmed on a replica set after concerns were raised about how filming in her home would affect her family.
‘It’s the essence of her house’