timpardoe.co.uk - tim's internet home| Start |
|
» Home |
| Quick Links |
|
BBC News Online |
| Other Content |
| Site Reading |
|
Digital Spy |
| Podcasts |
|
CNET's Buzz Out Loud |
| Banners |
|
|
| Clarissa Dickson-Wright |
|
Transcript of Interview from 'Desert Island Discs' CDW: Yes, I mean if you look at Georgian books, even late Georgian books, even the very early Victorian books, the first editions, for instance, of Eliza Acton, there are enormous swathes of literature about not overcooking your vegetables and how to make them 'o poarn' [sp.] and crisp and everything like that, and then he lifted piecemeal Fanny Farmer's 'Boston Irish Cookbook' which was, you know, boil everything in four gallons of water for forty minutes, (SL: especially sprouts!) because the Irish are awfully disastrous with vegetables. (They both laugh) SL: But, but are you saying that before that we did know how to cook. I mean, did she spoil us? CDW: Yes, we knew how to cook wonderfully. The Italian ambassador, the Venetian ambassador, because Italy didn't exist, writing in 1748 wrote: "the food of the inns of England is the stuff of which Heaven is made". I mean, nobody could say nowadays about the inns of England that the food is "of the stuff of which Heaven is made", although it's getting better. SL: So who helped us back onto the right road? Because it's often said that Elizabeth David with her French provincial cooking began to wake us up again. CDW: I think Elizabeth David was an enormous inspiration, I mean, my generation is obviously the generation that was inspired by Elizabeth David, but I think really that the Renaissance of British cookery was brought about by people like Antony Worrall Thompson, who was a great cook, Alistair Little, Sally Clark, Rowley Leigh, Simon Hopkinson, they all are around the same period and they all... SL: Delia Smith? CDW: Delia Smith cooks for Middle England, and she cooks very well for Middle England, and I will not have a word about this egg business, because there isn't a single hotel in the country except the Dorchester who can cook, and the Marcliffe at Pitfodels, that can cook eggs properly. SL: Which famous cook do you most admire? CDW: I think probably Robert May. Robert May was chef to James the Sixth of Scotland and consequently came to England with him, and when you... um... I don't know if you remember, but there was a dish I cooked on 'Two Fat Ladies' which was salmon with red wine and oranges, and nutmeg, well that was an untranslated Robert May recipe. And everybody said it was so modern it couldn't be historic and there is a crab salad in there which is... if you saw it, just as a typed recipe and say identified it you'd say 'shay perniece' [sp.] or something like that. SL: Record number two. CDW: My second sister, my sister June, who is I think probably the cleverest member of my family, married as her first husband a delightful man called Byron Janice, who at the time was tipped as the man most likely to succeed in piano playing circles. And was chosen to play at the Brussels Exhibition and um, we all went over to hear him play. SL: Early fifties... CDW: Early fifties, yes, I think I was about five or six, and um they used to come and stay with us when we were in London and um, he would always sort of take our piano out and have a Steinway brought in, and he would practice and practice and practice and I couldn't understand why he wanted to practice instead of coming and playing football with me. And when I went to the Brussels Exhibition I suppose it dawned on me why he spent so much time practising. [Music: Byron Janice - Etude Number Five in G Flat Major] SL: Byron Janice playing part of Chopin's Etude Number Five in G Flat Major. Memories of attending your first party in a posh frock Clarissa. Do you remember the first food that made an impression on you? CDW: Well I remember the first food very clearly, 'cos I think I must have been about three and a half. We had a picnic, I can see it very clearly, in the woods at Wisely, um by the Royal Horticultural Society, and it was a hard boiled egg and a cold sausage, and I remember peeling the egg and it peeled perfectly, you know how sometimes they do, and the sausage was just a very good sausage and I remember it distinctly and thinking "Gosh, this is life" in a way. SL: But the family lived in St. John's Wood in North London, very well heeled, servants and so on, did you... you had a cook presumably? CDW: Yeah, we had a wonderful cook called Louise Leeds, I mean she was about five foot two and weighed twenty stone, and she was illiterate, she never wanted to learn to read, you know, it wasn't something that interested her. And so I used to go and read recipes out loud to her, and like so many people that don't read, she just remembered them instinctively. She and my mother used to have great arguments about what they were going to serve. My father had quite a high profile in the medical profession so we entertained a lot, serious entertaining. And I remember on one wonderful occasion, Louise standing on this balcony, it was this Georgian house, so the balcony was creaking alarmingly, anyway, saying "Madam, if you make me cook that, I'll jump", and my mother saying "If you don't Louise, you might as well!" (SL laughs) SL: Your father, as I said, was a brilliant surgeon, attended royalty as well. CDW: Oh yes, yes. SL: Erm... first surgeon to remove a bullet from a spine without leaving the patient paralysed. CDW: That's right. It was a... I mean he was remarkable in pioneer surgery, he did a lot of things like that. When he was at the Tan Tong Sin hospital in Singapore, he developed the operation for stripping varicose veins because of the rickshaw coolies. Because of course they couldn't take the time to have them cut out and convalesce and so he decided that if you stripped them, and that was his operation. SL: How could he do all of that and be an alcoholic? CDW: You'd be amazed what people do and be an alcoholic. But I mean obviously, like all alcoholics at that stage his drinking hadn't really bitten in. Erm, I saw more of it perhaps than other members of the family, because he was fifty when I was born. SL: You were, what, thirteen years younger than I think than... CDW: Thirteen years younger than the next one up. SL: What did you see and how did his drinking effect home life? CDW: Well, as in any alcoholic home, there was always this tension, always this feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know, you never know with the alcoholic if they're going to come home in a good mood or they're going to come home drunk or whatever, erm, so there was always that tension, that 'walking on eggs' feeling that anybody that's been there will recognise. And of course he was, when he was very drunk, extremely violent, so he would come home and erm one would take cover. SL: Record number three. CDW: Is the first record I ever owned. Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock', which for my generation is a great sort of breakthrough, it's the real first rock and roll record, you know, the jiving years and all the excitement about it. And er, just opened my eyes to a whole different type of music. [Music: Bill Haley - Rock Around The Clock] SL: Bill Haley and 'Rock Around The Clock'. So Father made your life, Clarissa Dickson-Wright, unpredictable, unstable, where did you escape... How did you escape from all of that? CDW: Well I think initially with books. I've always been a book person, I mean, to this day I feel naked if I don’t have a book somewhere around me. And I remember, I learned to read when I was three and a half and I've been reading ever since. And then I went away to boarding school, and I loved boarding school because the goal posts didn't move. (SL: Stable?) The roles were there. If you wanted to break the rules, you broke them, if you didn't then you knew what they were. SL: Your father didn't leave you anything in his will, because there was a great falling out before he died, but what you did inherit from him, of course, was his alcoholism. When did it begin for you? CDW: It began for me when my mother died. Erm, I was if anything, perhaps too close to my mother, you know, we were bonded there together against my father's behaviour. And I came home and I found her dead and it was a shock I simply couldn't handle it. And I went round to a friend's house and I poured myself a large whisky which was a surprise to everybody because I really didn't drink. SL: How old were you? CDW: I was twenty-five. And erm, I remembered as I drank it feeling, you know, this is the answer, this is it, you know, why have I waited so long not to drink, you know, I've come home. And from thereon in I drank very heavily, very quickly, getting to two bottles of gin a day and the rest. SL: Interesting though that you hadn't drunk before that. Had you been positively avoiding it? CDW: Yes, because apart from my mother, the alcoholism was very obvious in the rest of my family. SL: But when you drank it you recognised it, your body recognised it. CDW: My body recognised it, and my genes recognised it, I suppose. SL: But you thought you could control it? CDW: No, I never thought I could control it. I was on a path for destruction. SL: And you knew that? CDW: And I knew it, and it was a choice that I made and I remember saying to God... SL: Why did you make that choice? CDW: I think that I felt this enormous sense of failure, that I had failed
my mother, that she had died before I had been able to help her create
a life that was enjoyable. |