Name: Nigella Lawson.
Age: 55.
Appearance: Still the reigning queen of televised cookery.
Nigella’s back! We haven’t seen her on our screens since … Since The Unpleasantness.
Oh yes, that business with Charles Saatchi. Well, actually I was referring to that rubbishy gameshow she did on Channel 4 a couple of years ago, but whatever.
Either way, hooray! What’s the reason for her return? Because she loves us, and in her heart she knows that we’ve missed her.
Really? No, of course not. It’s because she has a new book and television show out.
A new Nigella series? What’s this one called? Its name is Simply Nigella.
I’m not exactly sure what that means. Then let me quote the book’s official description for you. “Simply Nigella taps into the rhythms of our cooking lives, with recipes that are uncomplicated, relaxed and yet always satisfying.”
So all the recipes are quick and easy? No, because her last book was the quick-and-easy book. That one was called Nigella Express, and its recipes were so quick and easy that one of them was literally just a load of Marmite tipped into a bowl of spaghetti and stirred around.
Yuck. Does that even count as a recipe? Probably not, but this is Nigella’s world. We just happen to live in it.
Business as usual, then? Probably. The new show starts on Monday, so brace yourself for all the old Nigella favourites such as licked fingers, obliviously amused dinner party guests and thousands of steaming, unctuous, overflowing, blisteringly unnecessary adjectives.
Will these new episodes end in the traditional manner? With Nigella sneaking downstairs in her nightie, scooping up a handful of trifle from her fridge and shoving it in her mouth? They’d better. Imagine the outrage if they didn’t.
So Nigella is back and Jamie Oliver is back. Does this mean that Gordon Ramsay will be back soon, too? Keep your voice down. The last thing anyone needs to do is give that man ideas.
Do say: “Coming up on BBC2: Simply Nigella.”
Don’t say: “Coming up on BBC2: Complicatedly Nigella, where she’ll attempt to spin pasta from unicorn hair while tapdancing on the saddle of a flaming unicycle.”
.jpg?w=600)
