Isn't it hurtful, being called Two Fat Ladies? Two pairs of eyes swivel towards me.
"Why? It's an asset."
"Why? We are."
The two voices ring out in close harmony. One (Clarissa Dickson Wright) as booming as a lady magistrate, the other (Jennifer Paterson) as fruity as a drag artiste. CDW: "It's a bingo call, you know. 88, Two Fat Ladies. Next time you see us, look at the number on the motorcycle. Not that they use it now in Bingo. Not politically correct." Her upper class voice could silence the floor of the stock exchange. She doesn't approve of political correctness. Neither does Jennifer, who includes a recipe for cannabis brownies in their new cookery book, Two Fat Ladies Ride Again.
CDW: "I did slightly object to `Ladies'. It makes us sound like a public lavatory". Ha Ha Ha. You could set a metronome to Jennifer's laugh. CWD: "But as Jennifer says it won't have any relevance when we go to America."
JP: "Two Fat Cosy Comfort Stations." Ha Ha Ha. CWD: "Of course by American standards we're comparatively svelte. Two average women." Ha Ha Ha.
With the surprise and spot-on hilarity of a well aimed custard pie, the delicious double act of Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright first hit our screens in October last year when the motorcycle and sidecar containing cooking's answer to Morecambe and Wise vroom-vroomed its way into our kitchens and our lives. Not only was the TV show phenomenally successful (4.5 million viewers) but their first book sold 154,000 copies in the first three months of publication. Humour has increasingly been used as extra seasoning to food shows, though until now it has not been the central ingredient. But Two Fat Ladies' mix of no-nonsense cooking and crackling upper-class repartee hit TV gold. Now comes series and book number two.
The secret, explains Clarissa, is approachable food. "And approachable people," adds her partner. Not like these other dreadful cookery programmes. "22 at the last count," says Jennifer waving her arms like a demented windmill. "Ready Steady. Won't Cook. Eat Cook." Jennifer's improvisational skill is seasoned with the macabre. Her neo-Shakespearean asides are legendary. "Most of them have never cooked for a living." says Clarissa. "Take Delia. She's not a professional cook. She's a writer. Now, both Jennifer and I have gone out there and cooked till our feet squeaked. You never get the same adrenalin without having to get a meal on time for other people. Rick Stein I can understand because he's got a lovely character and it comes across and he's a proper cook." JP: "He doesn't make dainty plates."
"Dainty", like "fat-free", "calorie" and "diet" are banned words in the Two Fat Ladies' lexicon of culinary terms.
Like any successful double act, the dimpled duo have developed a natural balance. While Clarissa delivers the meat, Jennifer adds the sauce. Although they were "invented" by their TV director Pat Llewellyn ("A friend said: `You must meet this nut. You have a liking for large eccentric ladies.' "), they're as close and protective of each other as life-long friends - although Clarissa, who admits to 50, is a good deal younger than Jennifer, who admits to "between 60 and 70". Clarissa lives in Scotland and runs a cook shop in Edinburgh. Jennifer lives in London. She used to cook for the Spectator, but was sacked after she threw crockery out of the window.
CDW: "The second day of the pilot was the first time we cooked together, which should have been a recipe for disaster. But it was just as though we'd cooked together all our lives. I suppose we come from similar backgrounds. Similar educational backgrounds."
"And religious backgrounds," adds Jennifer. Both are Catholic. Clarissa's Irish (Protestant) father married an Australian (Catholic) heiress who he met in Singapore. "My grandmother wrote back `I would rather she were a black native heathen whore.' And my mother, bless her cotton socks, had the letter framed and hung in the downstairs loo." Ha Ha Ha.
As this anecdote demonstrates - for those who haven't seen the Mesdames in action - both are upper crust, products of a bygone age, of country estates, house parties and servants. "My mother never cooked," explains Clarissa. "I learnt by reading out recipes to the cook who was illiterate. Like many illiterates, she had a wonderful memory." And Jennifer? "I started when I was about four. Also with a cook. I am the only person in the family who ever had the slightest interest in food. My father couldn't even put the kettle on. They liked eating it, but had never even been into the kitchen."
Yet now, says Clarissa, with all the authority of her considerable weight, cooking is the new alchemy full of unnecessary mystique. "Just like lawyers. Using all these long words and dressing it all up to frighten the clients, and that's exactly what the food programmes do." And she should know. She practised as a barrister for 13 years before she was struck off for misconduct. Hardly surprising when she was drinking two bottles of gin a day. It's why she's fat, she explains. Nothing to do with eating. Just the quinine in the tonic, which did for her adrenal glands. "Six pints a day for 12 years . . . If I'd stuck to gin and water I'd be thin." Ha Ha Ha.
I feel less an interviewer than a tennis umpire, my head turning from left to right trying to keep the score with rambling anecdotes (usually Clarissa's) drawing forth Jennifer's killer one-liners. The best rallies come when something riles them. Like fat.
CDW: "I think there's a direct link between the increase in anti-depressants and tranquilisers and the decrease in fat in foods. Because people aren't keeping their seratonin levels up. And what stimulates seratonin levels is fat." JP: "I don't know anything about seratonin. What is seratonin?"
CDW: "I come from a medical background." (An understatement. Her father is Sir Arthur Dickson Wright, surgeon and doctor to the queen mother.) "The only non-chemical that stimulates your seratonin levels is animal fat. If you read the Royal Society of Chemistry book, or indeed Harold McGhie on food and cooking . . . The trouble with all these soi-disant nutritionists is that they just read each other, or read handouts from the food companies, the margarine companies."
JP: Fat covers your nerve ends. CDW: In times of stress what do people reach for? A cream bun. It's not just sugar you know. JP: Butter and dripping.
And they're off again. Jennifer's story about wartime mayonnaise: "Dried egg and liquid paraffin. At least it kept you regular." Ha Ha Ha. About the feebleness of vegetarians: "They're like that TV ad for batteries, the one with the rabbit and the drum that runs out of steam." On the horrors of hotel scrambled eggs (foolproof recipe by Jennifer in the new book). On anchovies ("Jennifer re-established the anchovy industry single-handedly. I'm surprised she doesn't use them in her chocolate cakes.")
No one could write scripts as spontaneous as this. And no one does, though they did try. "On the very first programme, they came up with this script and we had hysterics. "Toothsome." Jennifer takes up Clarissa's refrain. "Toothsome, toothsome."
CDW: "Which of us is going to say toothsome?" J: "Oh toothsome, this is very toothsome. After we messed it up about 15 times they gave up." Since when they're completely unscripted. Quite possibly the only unscripted stars in the TV firmament. The next series is already planned. And they're coming to Ireland.
CDW: "If heaven was half as good as Ballymaloe I'd be virtuous all the days of my life. The trouble with going to Ireland is you never get home again, even when you're sober."
JP: "It's all a party." "We have these enormously high viewing figures, much higher than any other cookery programme," says Clarissa. "Did you know we're the only cookery programme that's been taken up by the British Forces Overseas Network?" "Isn't that fun?" adds Jennifer. "Our boys at the front." And she pouts her lips, Monroe-style. "Apparently we're army pin-ups."
Two Fat Ladies Ride Again is published by Ebury Press (£17.99 in UK). The television series returns on October 29th at 8.30 p.m. on BBC 2.