Be nice to the elderly

I've spent the day at school finishing up work on my MMA project and am taking a little break before diving back in to GLB. Took an hour-long nap to revitalize and calm down the eye-twitch that has started this week from all the stress, and now I'm watching TV and plan to do the NYT Crossword before diving back into Russian politics.

There's a great Sunday afternoon show called Come Dine with Me on More 4. I think the original actually airs on Channel 4 through the week, but I only see it here on Sunday afternoons plus you get all five hosts at once. The premise is that 5 strangers who like to cook and entertain are grouped together, and over five nights they each host the others for dinner...each night they then rate the other's hosting abilities on a scale of 1 - 10 and the one who has the highest score at the end of the week wins £1000. All sorts of people volunteer for this. Actors and drama types. Housewives. Society dames. Gay men. Cash-in-hand men who aspire to be posh. It's quite funny how they pair people, and how petty some of these folks can be.

Today, one of the hosts is a woman who has to be at least 80. She's one of those slightly stooped but young-acting granny types who has an elegance and propriety about her, except for the orangey hair and the lipstick that is slightly askew.

The rest of the group are 30 something Londoners. There is a kind of hippie-chick anthropologist 40 something woman, a friendly single guy who is a fishmonger by trade, an estate agent who seems to think he's a chef waiting to be discovered - and who is blatantly rude in his criticism of others, and a gay property surveyor. The four are quite the epicureans, whereas the granny is just nice.

The four foodies serve all sorts of fancy fance food with coulis and infusions and essences. Granny served the following:
- tooth pick skewers of pineapple, cheese and olives, potato chips and prawn cocktail
- overcooked Chateaubriand because she doesn't like her meat undercooked, with roast potatoes
- a sherry trifle with lots of whipped cream and instant pudding and the full bottle of sherry (and cherries she salvaged from a can of fruit cocktail)

They were appalled. And that was before she decided to provide parlor entertainment by singing along to the My Fair Lady soundtrack in a warbly vibrato.

I love her.

Comments

Joe said…
Wonderful!

I wish I could see this.
Cup said…
You have to work out a dinner party hosted by her. I'd fly to the UK to attend that -- and I'd bone up on "My Fair Lady" tunes.
lulu said…
She would be right at home in the Midwest. Mmmmmmmmmm pudding!
Dale said…
This sounds like high class entertainment. I wish our tv programs were as consistently entertaining.
Ruth999 said…
My sister's ex sister-in-law was one of the contestants in the first series, several years ago, so we all watched it every day for the week. Rocky 'cheated' in that she bought most of the food ready prepared from the kosher butcher - she even bought the egg-and-onion, for heaven's sake! But she came second overall cos her dinner party was just so relaxed as she wasn't worrying about the cooking!
Marni said…
Sounds awesome! Wish we had that here... can I come watch TV with you sometime?
Now that's a show and I wish Bravo picked it up so that it could fill-in between seasons of Top Chef.

This word verification? "ukgaq."
Melinda June said…
I completely endorse the people who cheat. The point is to entertain, not cook.

It is a great show. But there's no need to suck up, dale.

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