IRONY or PSYCHOPATH: 2, Nigella Lawson

Okay, so writing about how Nigella speaks is a little passé – passé like, say, Alistair McGowan and his FUNNY FUNNY IMPRESSIONS are passé. However. At the seventeen minute mark of the seventh episode of Nigella’s Kitchen, which aired last night, there was this amazing little moment where her fattened, opulent syntax revealed, to our mind, a side to Nigella’s HAPPY SUCCESSFUL LIFE that we’re not sure we’ve seen before:

It’s the cooking that needs precision and a great deal of pernickety detail – that is enough to send me over the edge. But then [turning to the camera and smiling with all her teeth] that’s not very hard.

You see what we mean – it makes us rather suspect that Nigella is one of two things: deeply, deeply unhappy or actually mentally ill. Sardonically ironic, then, or a psychopath? Let us consider the evidence, all taken from last night’s episode:

At the end of a busy week, I love a bit of hunter-gathering so that I can grab the wherewithal for a really relaxing weekend of cooking and eating. PSYCHO

Though I say peas, they are in fact petit pois, that’s what it says on the label and they are indeed very small peas. PSYCHO

It feels wrong, and yet good [using a gigantic knife to cut a big pile green beans inside their packet]. PSYCHO

Despite the bucolic appearance, these leaves were not picked in turquoise-skied Portafino but in grey Battersea. But no matter, they smell fantastic. IRONY

If anything is guaranteed to get my children coming to the table promptly, and nothing is really guaranteed to do that. IRONY

It’s like a holiday without leaving the kitchen and without the hell of air travel. IRONY

My ideal way to spend my Sunday is just giving myself up in the warm embrace of the kitchen. HOW VERY SYLVIA PLATH OF YOU. PSYCHO

I am thinking of everything here. PSYCHO

I want a flat oval-ish. I don’t want any geometry professor telling me this isn’t an oval. It’s my meatloaf. IRONY

Inside my meatloaf are jewels. And these jewels are eggs. Hard-boiled eggs. PSYCHO

And now [talking to meatloaf] this baby just needs swaddling. And what I’m swaddling it with is bacon. PSYCHO – this one made me think of Nigella cooking children, like the witch in Hansel und Gretel.

The thing about meatloaf, it comes from a time when food was fuel. IRONY

I feel a sense of Sunday lunch splurge coming on. PSYCHO

To give this the consistency of dressing, I need a quick trip to the frigo. IRONY

Try and be patient, to be as serene as this sauce looks. PSYCHO

Look at this, just ready to be dolloped on a baked potato. I say, let’s cut out the middle man [licking cheese and buttermilk off the spoon]. IRONY

Friend at dinner: I haven’t heard of a strawberry crumble. Nigella: You haven’t lived. PSYCHO

Endnotes: Nigella’s Kitchen is the only show on the BBC to have it’s own ‘focus-puller’ and two ‘home economists’ – the latter of which suggests, a la Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman being taught how to fuck gracefully in preparation for Eyes Wide Shut, Nigella needs to be taught how to make it look like she has a happy home life. Also, as ever, episode seven concludes with a post-credits sequence featuring Nigella returning to the ‘frigo’ at the dead of night for a wee snack. This time, she decides on an entire slice of bacon-wrapped, egg-studded meat loaf between two slabs of bread. She takes a bite, spreading her fat lips a width that would absolutely dislocate my jaw. PSYCHO, mos def.

The Verdict: PSYCHOPATH

A very strange, very troubled woman who has suffered her fair share of tragedy and has lived her entire life named after one of the biggest douchebags this country’s ever been governed by, has definitely been sent over the edge. ‘Try to be patient, to be as serene as this sauce looks’ – she manages for half an hour a week. But when the cameras stop rolling, all bets are off. Good luck Charles, keep an ‘emergency bottle’ of gin handy yeah?