The Delia Dream.

I have a dream. Not a recurrent dream just a…persistent one. It involves Delia Smith, the doyen of British cookery and woman with some complicated ideas about cooking Christmas dinner. I imagine if she’d gone down the Keith Floyd route of mixing booze with his presenting.

This is informed by something that happened a few years ago. In which the erstwhile television cook stormed the pitch in the middle of a Norwich City game and proceeded to inform the fans, in a coherent and sober way, what her thoughts were.

Now imagine the scene, our host is standing at her traditional homely kitchen counter, in her traditional homely kitchen (in her very own home we are shown through loving exterior wide shots) the ingredients for the upcoming recipe arrayed all nice and tidy around her with the appropriate utensils. And a glass of wine, with bottle nice and handy.

That last detail is important – watch it carefully.

She launches into her opening salvo; a lovely little starter that involves pancetta and cheese. She stutters and stammers a bit, but let’s be honest, that’s just her style. Saint Delia can be forgiven any kind of inarticulate garbling because she has our best interests at heart, she wants us to learn to cook and enjoy it. Bless her heart.

Try not to be distracted by her earrings, as mesmeric these adornments are – looking like those head phones that people really serious about music wear – you do not want to miss any of this wonderful, tasty recipe. The food is the important thing, not the preposterous jewellery.

Seriously.

During this segment she sips daintily at this wine. Stuff that is probably quite expensive, but that she has a cellar the size of your entire house full of. After all Delia’s a very wealthy woman and rightfully so. She’s worked hard over the decades to bring good cooking and awareness of fresh ingredients.

Y’know until this controversial tome came along, but we won’t worry about that either. Oh no.

At the end of her guide to creating this culinary treasure she looks pretty relaxed and the wine bottle is looking a little over half empty.

It’s all good for Delia.

She now guides us over to another worktop. Homely as the first, forgetting the fact that you’re now being guided through a kitchen that a family of three could live in with room to spare for garage. It doesn’t matter, it’s the illusion that she’s just like you and I, and she happens to know all these wonderful things about cooking.

Our loosened hostess carries the glass and bottle of wine with her to this second counter. There’s already two bottles of wine waiting there, open, for her, but this is neither here nor there.

Her next dish is a, let’s say, stew, full of fresh vegetables, spices, herbs and whatever meat might be in your brain at the moment. A game stew. How’s that? A mix of venison and partridge perhaps. Yum.

The wine takes something of a bashing in this section, as this dish requires a lot of cooking so poor Delia is becoming rather thirsty. And giggly. Really it’s infectious, how much fun she’s having chopping and browning meat and cooking vegetables. She even makes some potatoes to accompany the dish, as well as a nice red currant jelly.

It’s all a lot of work and she babbles with increasing ebullience. Sometimes meandering away from the task at hand, pointing at the camera man and laughing at that oh-so funny birthmark that looks like an ejaculating penis on his face or becoming quiet and contemplative as she ruminates about how much she loves her husband, he’s a pain in the arse, but that doesn’t matter, because we’ve been through so much…

Now watch as an empty wine bottle is discreetly taken from the counter. Delia isn’t even aware as she sloshes some more wine into her glass, gets confused, asks if that was supposed to go into the stew and is told that’s the bottle of red on her right.

She quaffs her drinking wine, while pouring her cooking wine into the pot. A few finishing touches and a few more slugs of wine and we can leave the pot to simmer while Delia brings us to dessert.

“Don’t you take that camera off me, ya basserds!” she shouts when the poor, penis-faced camera man moves a little too fast as she moves back to the original counter.

This counter, by the magic of television and a put-upon and unsung home economist, has been cleaned and the ingredients for the meal’s finale are placed out.

A tiramisu. Oh dear.

She goes through creaming the mascarpone and cream together, swaying and making obscene suggestions to the camera man, “Is that to scale?” she asks the poor man, pointing the mark that he’s becoming ever more conscious of. She manages this, just.

Soaking of the sponges proves too much and things take a turn for the disturbing. The coffee liqueur bottle is to her lips in a flash and its contents are guzzled with disconcerting speed. It’s quite amazing that she doesn’t spill any as she’s swaying like a sapling in a hurricane.

“Thissis boring! Less fuckin’ party!” she cries and clambers up onto the counter and starts to dance, gripping the coffee liqueur bottle, with wild abandon.

The crew look on, being showered by Tia Maria, unsure of what they should do. With grim professionalism, and perhaps a little bit of vengeful glee, the cameraman keeps his lens firmly on the action.

Delia’s warmed to this party idea and is now calling for some “fuckin’ music”. Her blouse has fallen off one shoulder, revealing densely freckled skin, much to the horror of every member of the crew. Except maybe that producer who’s had a thing for her since the early days.

“C’mon! Get yer fuckin’ clothes off! Don’t be such a buncha prudes!” she slurs, undoing more buttons on her blouse. “Get em off!”

Some production assistant has scurried out of the room to retrieve Delia’s husband, who has that ‘oh, fuck, not again’ look about him and grabs her off the counter.

Our last view of Delia as the credits roll is her being dragged out of the kitchen, stripped to her bra and screaming, “Yer alla buncha fuggin’ borin’ cunts! Aaaargh!”

Join us next week when she makes coq au vin.

That is a dream. Isn’t it beautiful?


Will