Two Fat Ladies

Two Fat Ladies is a BBC2 television cooking programme starring Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson. It originally ran for four series, from 9 October 1996 to 28 September 1999, being produced by Optomen Television for the BBC. Since then, the show has been repeated frequently on the Food Network and Cooking Channel in the U.S. and on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia. In the UK, the show has been transmitted many times on the satellite channel Good Food.

Programme

The show centred on Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, travelling the United Kingdom for most of the episodes, except for one episode in Ireland and a Christmas special in Jamaica, on a Triumph Thunderbird motorbike driven by Paterson. It sported the registration N88 TFL (the British bingo call for number 88 is "Two Fat Ladies") and had a Watsonian Jubilee^[1] GP-700 "doublewide" sidecar where Dickson Wright rode. They travelled to various destinations, such as an army garrison or an all-girls school, where they prepared large meals, often with unusual ingredients.

Paterson's uncle, Anthony Bartlett, was Gentiluomo to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and so some episodes were videotaped at Westminster Cathedral and an Irish convent. While cooking at Westminster Cathedral, Paterson cooked an original dish, Peaches Cardinal Hume.^[2] In the same episode, Dickson Wright demonstrated a bubble and squeak recipe^[3] which used two ounces of lard, which she insisted is the only fat besides beef dripping that could ever get hot enough to produce the recipe as it should be produced. Similarly, her recipe for buttered spatchcock saw chickens covered with a thick layer of butter, bread and more butter on top of the bread. Recipes such as this led to criticism by some who considered them to be a bad influence on the British diet.^[4]

Optomen Television had this to say, as if in reply to their critics: "The Ladies are cooks not chefs - they reject the pretensions and elaborations of haute cuisine and are aggressively unfashionable, delighting in such ingredients as clotted cream, lard and fatty meats."^[1]

Theme song

Paterson and Dickson Wright sang their own theme song written by composer Pete Baikie, and Paterson often burst into song during the show, once introducing apple pan dowdy with a verse from the song Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy (and erroneously attributing the song to The Andrews Sisters). They revelled in cooking at grand locations, as at Lennoxlove House.

Personal lives

Both Paterson and Dickson Wright affected unconcern with fat or calories. Paterson also smoked heavily and, at one point, took the opportunity to go out for a cigarette while a dish cooked in the oven. Most episodes ended with her smoking a cigarette and consuming an alcoholic beverage. Several times references were made to the fact that Dickson Wright, a recovering alcoholic, no longer drank any alcoholic beverages.

Paterson died of cancer on 10 August 1999, one month after diagnosis. The day before she died, she asked Dickson Wright to bring her a tin of caviar but when Dickson Wright arrived at the hospital, Paterson had already died. Dickson Wright said that after Paterson's funeral, she ate the caviar as a tribute to her friend.^[5] Dickson Wright died at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 15 March 2014.^[6]

In popular culture

• The show was parodied on Royal Canadian Air Farce as "One Fat Lady" with the late John Morgan as Dickson Wright making a fatty and sugary treat consisting of goose fat, greasy animal lard, a packet of Sugar Twin and blackstrap molasses.
• A February 1999 episode of Saturday Night Live aired a sketch that parodied Two Fat Ladies. Brendan Fraser and Darrell Hammond played them, as they cooked dishes sautéed in pure buttermilk (which is, in reality, quite low in fat, <1%).^[7]
• In Season 2, Episode 14 of Gilmore Girls Rory and Lorelai are watching repeats of Two Fat Ladies.^[8]

Cookbooks

"The Two Fat Ladies" produced four cookbooks which accompanied each of the four television series. In order: Two Fat Ladies: Gastronomic Adventures (with Motorbike and Sidecar), The Two Fat Ladies Ride Again, The Two Fat Ladies: Full Throttle and Two Fat Ladies Obsessions.^[9]

DVD release

The Two Fat Ladies DVD set was released in the United States in July 2008. The Acorn Media UK set includes a 40-minute BBC tribute to Paterson, biographies of the stars and "six yummo recipes" in a booklet. It contains all 24 episodes across four discs. The show had previously been released in Britain as a Region 2 DVD set.^[10]

Episode list

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

• Production of Series 4 was cut short by the death of Jennifer Paterson shortly after completion of the fourth episode.

References

External links

• Two Fat Ladies on IMDb
• Two Fat Ladies at TV.com
• Two Fat Ladies at Cooking Channel