I was undulating around the kitchen, getting all deep and intense and sensuous about a piece of lemon meringue pie left over from last night’s birthday party, when my sister asked me if I needed to visit the chiropractor again.
‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, puzzled.
‘Well, you’re walking with a limp.’
‘No I’m not.’ I advanced, waving a mug of tea. ‘Look. No limp.’
‘I know what I saw. Were you being Nigella again?’
‘Oh shut up.’
Lots of women are Nigellaing around their kitchens as I write; she has a lot to answer for. It gets confusing for the fellas, who are hard pressed to remember any of the food she cooks because all they notice is her ample bosom poking over the pots. When their womenfolk start wearing their hair over one eye and sloshing heavy cream onto everything, the men tend to get nervy and start at strange noises, fearing the bedroom performance message underlying all those oysters. Nigella says she’s about gastro porn, but to men that simply means a meat pie and Penthouse. Food means more than nourishment now: it’s one of the new religions, complete with sects and dogmas, Epicureanism become orthodox. Jamie Oliver is all about accessibility, and lately has become quite the social activist, campaigning for cheaper organic food and starting a non-profit restaurant in order to create employment opportunities for deprived teenagers. He could be a Uniting Church type; Nigella would be High Anglican, all bells and smells, unless she decided to go all Maharishi. Keith Floyd was more your whiskey priest type, while Graeme Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet who still turns up on cable, really did get religion, and changed all his recipes to godly ones that didn’t give too much pleasure but undoubtedly kept the bowels of compassion open.
At the moment there’s a rather boring one, The Best (the three cooks are rather like joyous rosy-cheeked young evangelists), on ABC at 8pm on Wednesdays where once Jamie Oliver and Nigella gloried and drank deep. Three clean-cut youngsters compete for points awarded by a group of food fogies who have developed the kind of bossiness that so affects focus groups. Becoming a judge is such a test of character: assume authority and feel your attitudes hardening. Anyway, the dialogue is all rather stilted and the competition is kinda phony, because they’re all professional cooks anyway. There are so many TV cooks out there that catering