Cooking With Tyres

Good God! Sophie Dahl has reinvented herself as a celebrity chef. They’re really dredging the bottom of the televisual barrel now. As if we don’t have enough gastronomy programmes on TV as it is.

Winnie Mandela (who is a bit of a cook herself and at one time advocated the tyre and petrol BBQ) has reportedly been criticising her ex husband. Apparently she said that name Mandela was "an albatross around the necks" of her family. I would have thought it would be relatively simple for her to revert to her maiden name of Winnie Madikizela, but then she wouldn’t have half as much influence, would she?

Talking of cooking; Overheard In The Caravan:

(Hay and I are watching Nigel Slater cook a pudding using plums.)

Chairman: “We must use the greengages this year. Last year they all came at once and we didn’t have much chance to use them.”

Hay: “Yes, the plums and greengages all rotted on the trees last year.”

Chairman: “Greengages? Have we got greengages?”

Hay: “Yes, the very ones you just mentioned just a second ago. I really worry about your memory at times. You haven’t got goldfish genes, have you?”

Later:

(Hay and I are watching a programme about some new theory concerning mothers and foetuses being in competition.)

Narrator: “From the first few seconds the father’s sperm has to overcome a series of booby-traps set by the mother’s body to ensure only the healthiest sperm reach the egg.”

Chairman: “The first one is what we experts call The Headache.”

Hay: “The father has some good defences himself. The most impressive is what we women term The Fart, which is almost on a par with The Snore in efficacy.”