Here is the news: Hunky Huw is Mary’s hot dish of the day
Auntie Marge can’t eat sprouts — she says they give her wind. Sharon’s twins are vegan this year, and uncle norm declares with a smirk that he’s strictly a breast man, not leg.
Fussy eaters are the bane of Christmas. But be thankful that BBC news’s Huw edwards won’t be tucking into his turkey round your place next week.
Huw’s dietary idiosyncracies deserve a chapter in a book of neurotic newsreaders. He won’t eat ketchup, or any other sauce except HP brown, he announced on Mary Berry’s Christmas Party (BBC1).
Mayonnaise is poison to him. He detests tomatoes and mustard (‘english or French’) and when Mary made him taste mango chutney, he pulled a face like a toddler mistaking a date for a boiled sweet — first shock, then horror, then abject misery.
But he likes lumpy school custard with the skin on it. never mind festive cookery shows, the Beeb needs to revive Radio 4’s in the Psychiatrist’s Chair for an urgent examination of Huw’s psyche.
Mary didn’t mind. We already knew she had a soft spot for tall men with gallons of hair gel, and if Huw had stood with his thumbs tucked into his jeans, Paul Hollywood style, she might have swooned. With a saucy wink, she confided that she likes to snuggle up in bed by ten to watch Huw every night. But she didn’t want to overtax his kitchen skills, so she kept the lessons extra simple.
For her version of sausage and mash, she’d already cooked the potatoes. And the cocktail sausages. All Huw had to do was wield the masher, and dollop a splodge onto every banger. the way Mary applauded and cooed, he might have been producing a triumphant Bake Off showstopper.
Her other cooking incompetents tackled slightly trickier challenges. eleanor tomlinson, Poldark’s Demelza, was shaking with nerves as she made a meringue roulade. All Cornish life in the 18th century has taught her, she said, is how to gut herrings for Stargazy Pie.
Britain’s sprint champion Dina Asher-Smith, the joint fastest woman on earth this year, had a go at crispy halloumi with tomato chutney — a dish that would send Huw into hysterical breakdown.
And comedian Joe Lycett baked a fruit loaf, before admitting that his favourite Christmas treat is a bowl of six Weetabix with double cream. that would make a fussy eater of anyone.
More seasonal recipes were unveiled on Inside The Christmas Factory (BBC2) as Gregg Wallace visited Sheffield’s vast nestle plant to discover how the Quality Street selection is made.
As ever, Gregg’s incredulity went into overdrive. to see gallons of gloop slowly solidify into confectionery blew his mind: ‘Wahay! Right! that’s proper fit toffee.’
He watched a mechanical grabber: ‘the sweet’s being lifted up. Brilliant! Ah-ha!’ And as the wrappers were applied, his thrillometer went off the chart: ‘they’re just twisting it. BRiLLLiAnnnnt!’ in fairness, some of the facts and figures were truly surprising. twelve tankers each pump 20 tons of warm liquid chocolate into the factory’s vats every day. Cripes.
But the details had to be spread pretty thin to make the manufacture of a tub of soft-centre chocs stretch across an hour.
the most interesting segments came when we nipped outside, to learn about the history of panto with Ruth Goodman, and to visit a German bauble workshop in picturesque Coburg.
Best fact of the night — when turkeys had to walk to market, farmers made leather bootees for their birds, to protect their feet. now that’s fussy.