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Obituary for Jennifer Paterson
From BBC Television News, transmitted 10 August 1999
Newsreader: Jennifer Paterson, star of the cookery programme, 'Two Fat
Ladies', has died at the age of 71. She'd been suffering from lung cancer.
Our correspondent, Nick Higham looks back at her life.
[Cut to clip from 'Two Fat Ladies']
V/O: Stardom came suddenly to Jennifer Paterson, as it came late. She
was in her sixties when the BBC paired her with Clarissa Dickson-Wright
and the motorcycle sidecar, to create an unlikely hit.
[Cut to Clarissa Dickson-Wright]
CDW: I think it was one of those gifts from God, as Jennifer used to
say. You know, I mean, I think the BBC thought that we would fight, I
think that's what the dynamic was going to be, you know, two opinionated
women in the same kitchen, it's the Chinese symbol for war, but clearly
in some previous life we were best friends, because what you see is what
you get, we got on immediately, right from the pilot we got on incredibly
well.
[Cut to clip from 'Two Fat Ladies']
V/O: The food they cooked was splendidly old-fashioned and politically
incorrect, just like them.
JP: Now what we want to bake is a 'bouquet garni', or a 'faggot of herbs'
as we call it here.
V/O: And Jennifer wasn't always fussy about where her ingredients came
from.
JP: And bay leaves, you can always steal them off people's front doorsteps
[CDW laughs].
[Cut to early pictures of Jennifer]
V/O: She'd been a famous beauty in her youth, but also a rebel, expelled
from school. [Cut to clip of Jennifer in a bar, shaking cocktails]. In
later life she was often restless, a frustrated performer [Jennifer starts
to sing madly as she shakes cocktails], until television found a way to
use her charm, wit, rogueness and sheer joy of life [she continues singing].
[Clip fades out]
Transcribed by Tim Pardoe, January 2000
Text © Copyright BBC Worldwide,
1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
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