Clarissa Dickson Wright

[Opening Theme Music]

SL: My castaway this week is a cook. Her father was a brilliant surgeon but an alcoholic, and his daughter suffered in the same way. Inheriting a small fortune in her late twenties, she drank it all away within a few years. Though her money disappeared, her intelligence, wit and culinary skills survived, to be discovered eventually by television. In the programme 'Two Fat Ladies', she famously partnered Jennifer Paterson in a series of highly entertaining and eccentric cookery adventures. Jennifer died earlier this year, so what now for the lady left behind? The lady with the pathological hatred of carrots, who once knocked out an Alsatian with her bare fists, and who rejoices, or suffers, in the name of 'Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright'. Forgive me Clarissa, but it is a completely ridiculous handle. What were your parents thinking of?

CDW: Well they had great trouble deciding what to call me in the first place. I mean they went through all the sorts of various things like Verbena and Nigella and then they blindfolded my mother and turned her loose in the library and thank God she pulled out Richardson's 'Clarissa' and not the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'. And then I think they were so delighted that they'd finally found a name, they got pissed on the way to the church. (SL laughs)

SL: What is it that you have against the humble carrot?

CDW: Well... (laughs) I just don't... as I get older I have this more and more pathological hatred of them. My father used to pull them out of the ground and sort of dust them off and feed them to me, still with the slugs on them. And so I think I got sort of put off them. Now of course I would quite readily eat the slug, though I still have this thing against the carrot.

SL: And why do you go around beating up Alsatian dogs?

CDW: No, no, I didn't! I was working for somebody who had this very badly behaved Alsatian, it had already taken out the gardener's bicep, and I was coming home from the dustbins and this thing came racing towards me with its ears back and its teeth bared and there was nobody but me and the Alsatian anywhere for miles, and I remembered what my grandmother had said that if you hit a dog on the right point of it's jaw, you knock it out. So I thought, well I had nothing to lose so I went right down and went WHAM and the thing somersaulted over. (SL laughs) When it came to, of course, I was it's pack leader - it followed me everywhere, I was inseparable from it. (SL laughs)

SL: Well obviously Clarissa, television when it discovered you, sought to exploit some of what, I think, most people would call eccentricity, but also with your collusion it was deeply politically incorrect in calling you 'Two Fat Ladies'. You didn't mind this at all did you?

CDW: Well, people used to say, like journalists hate the word 'fat', especially American journalists, and they used to say "Don't you object to the title?" And I said "well there are two of us, I had problems with ladies 'cos it sounds like a public convenience, but which bit do you object to, you know? Are you saying I'm thin?" (SL laughs) And they get terribly embarrassed, and there was actually one journalist who couldn't say the word fat, we had to sort of re-educate him to say it.

SL: Of course it's been tremendously successful, very unusual for a British cookery program to be successful in America...

CDW: Unique.

SL: Is it unique?

CDW: Totally unique, yeah. I mean I now can't go out, because when I go out I am always accosted by groups of Americans or Canadians or Australians or South Africans... and the Americans come up and say (American accent) "Oooh, we love you", and when I was walking to the rugby the other day, South Africa and Australia match, everyone: all the Australians were going (Australian accent) "Oh geez, hey it's you!" and all the South African's going (South African accent) "it's the lady on the telly". (SL laughs)

SL: And in Japan you've become a man?

CDW: No, only a man's voice. Japanese women have little, breathy voices so that when they were recording it they couldn't use women's voices, so they had men's voices going (stereotypical impression) "ho ha, ha!" (She laughs)

SL: So it's been a great success, and then sadly, sadly Jennifer upped and died in August. Was it on the cards? Did you know it was coming?

CDW: No. When we were filming at Knowsley Safari Park, which was the last one we did, she was in cracking form, and she loved it because she loved elephants and they had these elephants and lions and things. And then, you know, I said "well I'll see you in a couple of weeks" and then halfway through the following week she said "Oh I don't feel very well, I think I'm going to bed" and I said "well you must go and see a doctor, and don't let them bully you into filming if you're not well enough". And she said "I don't think I could darling" and it was that moment I realised that she really was ill and so she went to the doctor, and they did the tests and of course discovered that she had rampant cancer and three and half weeks later she was dead. But she died magnificently.

SL: Did she?

CDW: Oh, she was wonderful, I mean she was an example to all of us. If I can die that well I shall be very happy.

SL: Tell me about your first record.

CDW: My first record is Kenny Rogers' 'The Gambler'. I'm a great fan of Country and Western music and I suppose people always used to say to me, you know, "are you a gambler?" And I said "no, no", because I don't gamble on the horses or tables or whatever, but I realised that I actually take quite considerable risks with myself and with my career. And I think this sums up the philosophy of my life.

[Music: Kenny Rogers - 'The Gambler']

SL: Kenny Rogers and 'The Gambler'. Another part of the secret of your success really Clarissa, is of course that you championed all that unhealthy food, all that fat stuff, all those artery cloggers. Do you genuinely like that sort of stuff?

CDW: Oh, without a moment's hesitation, the 'Complete Works of Hector Herbert Munro', otherwise known as 'Saki'. And I took that book everywhere with me, police cells, upside down motor cars, anything you like, you know.

SL: And your luxury?

CDW: The wind-up radio.

SL: Clarissa Dickson Wright, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

[Closing Theme Music]