Plenty of dough: Nigella enjoys a pizza. Photograph: BBC/Pacific Films
While the BBC is deep in the mire of its fakery scandal, can we just pause for a minute while I ask a pertinent question: erm, Nigella Lawson?
Is there anything that isn't fake about b>Nigella Express? Does anyone in the country really believe that's really her kitchen for a start? Or that her daughter has ever been in any of those 'local' convenience stores before? Or any of the 'surprise' guests last night were actually a surprise? Alan Yentob turned up at one point, and did some b>entirely spontaneous nodding in appreciation of a 'standby' pudding she happened to have in the cupboard. Luckily a film crew also happened to be lurking in there to film the whole thing for posterity.
Nigella introduces so many kinds of fake we need new words for it, like snowed-in Innuits trapped in a snow house having just heard there's a blizzard on the way. There's the simple, continuity fakery (such as implying her phone is connected when her surprise guests call to say they'll be popping into the studio at the end of the episode). But how can one properly explain that stage school smile-to-camera she flashes every ten seconds? Other than to say it's like a bad French and Saunders pastiche of Nigella Lawson doing a smile. But it doesn't stop there. There are the nine circles of middle class social fakery to contend with. The supposition that we all sneer at the thought of condensed milk. The fact that the phrase 'redistribute the wealth' is used without any hint of irony while discussing a lamb, mint and redcurrant salad.
But let's hope the current witch hunt doesn't chase Nigella out of Television Centre. She's landed herself the best comedy on TV.
