The legacy of Two Fat Ladies The Washington Post reported Dickson Wright died in Scotland on March 15, 2014, after a brief and undisclosed illness. Her death came several years after the loss of her television partner Paterson, who succumbed to lung cancer a few short months after being diagnosed.
Producer Patricia Llewellyn discovered Dickson Wright when she was working in one of the bookstores and partnered her with Paterson for Two Fat Ladies. At the time, Dickson Wright has said, she’d never had a cooking lesson.
Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of the stars of the British cooking show Two Fat Ladies, has died. She was 66.
Dickson Wright died Saturday at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary following a long illness, her agent Heather Holden-Brown told BBC News.
Dickson Wright was born Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright on June 24, 1947. She started out as a lawyer but wrote in her 2007 autobiography, Spilling the Beans, that her battle with alcohol put an end to her legal career. (Two Fat Ladies episodes sometimes alluded to Dickson Wright’s status as an alcoholic.)
She then segued into the food business, running cookbook stores in London and Edinburgh and operating her own catering business, among other jobs.
The Two Fat Ladies? They LOATHED each other: So says one of their closest friends, in this fascinating insight into the much-loved double act
- Jennifer Paterson died of cancer in 1999, aged 71
- Clarissa Dickson Wright died in hospital in Edinburgh on Saturday
- According to a friend, away from the cameras they were not as close
- When they filmed together, they were actually put up in different hotels
The is poignant, funny and ever-so-slightly ridiculous. TV chef Clarissa Dickson Wright approaches the pearly gates to be greeted by her old friend and Two Fat Ladies sidekick Jennifer Paterson, who is on her motorbike, resplendent in a rhinestone-studded helmet.
As Jennifer revs the engine, Clarissa clambers inelegantly into the sidecar and off they roar to rustle up some partridge in cider gravy for St Peter, who can’t possibly know what is about to hit him.
Such were the fantasies of fans this week as they took to the internet to mourn the end of an era.
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Jennifer died of cancer in 1999, aged 71; while Clarissa died on Saturday in an Edinburgh hospital aged 66
Jennifer died of cancer in 1999, aged 71; on Saturday, we also lost Clarissa, who died in an Edinburgh hospital aged 66.
Between them, the Two Fat Ladies caused a culinary and cultural revolution, attracting 70 million viewers worldwide with their TV show, which Clarissa used to boast was the Queen Mother’s favourite viewing, and becoming possibly the most unlikely TV duo ever.
Posh, middle-aged, and utterly un-PC, they cooked with mountains of lard, mixed ingredients using fat fingers clad in chunky jewels, and were wont to nip out for a fag and, in Jennifer’s case, a swig of whisky mid-preparation.
It is doubtful that we shall see their like again, alas.
Between them, the Two Fat Ladies caused a culinary and cultural revolution, attracting 70¿million viewers worldwide
But while it is a romantic that they are now reunited in death, it’s possibly one even they would guffaw about.
Because, away from the cameras, the two weren’t as close as fans would like to think.
Indeed, the picture that has emerged this week, as former friends and colleagues remember the much-loved partnership, is rather less jolly.
One close friend, who knew both women well, even tells the Mail that their jolly bonhomie was purely an act for the cameras, and that the true relationship bubbled away with jealously, resentment and rivalry.
‘They were not friends,’ says PR executive Ian Scott, a long-term confidant of Jennifer, who also became close to Clarissa.
Away from the cameras, the two werent as close as fans would like to think a close friend said
‘Jennifer in particular couldn’t stand Clarissa and was often quite horrible about her. She’d call her “that dreadful woman”.
When they filmed together, they were actually put up in different hotels.’
Before Jennifer knew she was ill, he claims, she loaned Clarissa (who was famously hopeless with her finances) some money.
Later, when Jennifer learned she had cancer, Mr Scott claims she bitterly regretted it, saying: “That bloody woman. Now I will never get my money back.”
‘She was furious and she let everyone know about it,’ says Mr Scott. ‘In fact, many of her friends pretty much turned against Clarissa.’
This, Mr Scott claims, resulted in a most unbecoming row over Jennifer’s funeral — a grand affair with guests from very different worlds.
Clarissa claimed she spoke to Jennifer on the telephone most days in the weeks before her death
Senior clergy were there, as were the likes of chef Antonio Carluccio and the novelist Beryl Bainbridge.
The reading was given by writer A.N. Wilson, while the Prince of Wales sent a representative. Of course Clarissa was there. It was unthinkable that she wouldn’t be.
‘But there was a real fuss about where she should be seated,’ reveals Mr Scott.
‘I got a phone call from one of Jennifer’s friends (a very well-connected friend, he points out) asking me not to put Clarissa in the first or second row because Jennifer would not have wanted her there.
‘Seating Clarissa at the back of the church would have caused a scandal and it would have been most cruel. I think Clarissa would have been terribly hurt.’
Clarissa Dickson Wright who died on Saturday
In the event she was seated in the third row.
While it was never claimed that the women were the best of friends (they did not even know each other before being paired up by TV guru Pat Llewellyn), it was thought they were rather fond of each other. And there was certainly a level of trust there.
Hilariously, Clarissa once admitted how she placed her entire life in Jennifer’s hands.
‘I never minded sitting in the sidecar when she drove, even if I knew she was on her second bottle of vodka,’ she said in an interview, pointing out that since she herself had driven while drunk, it was no big deal.
And they certainly stayed in touch once the cameras stopped rolling. Clarissa claimed she spoke to Jennifer on the telephone most days in the weeks before her death, and took her a jar of caviar on the day she died — but was too late.
Instead she ate the caviar, in surely the most fitting of tributes, after the funeral. She always spoke warmly of the older woman in interviews, once describing her as “protective” of her.
‘I think the problems came more from Jennifer,’ says Mr Scott. ‘There was a nasty side to her, a deliberate, cruel side, all her friends knew it.
‘I remember her having an argument with a man who had a birthmark on his face. She ended by saying “And you have the mark of Cain on your face”.
‘On the way home, I said: “You will have to go to confession over that” (Jennifer was a devout Roman Catholic).
‘Clarissa got some of that — not to her face, as far as I can remember, but behind her back.’ Was this nastiness returned?
‘Oh no. Clarissa was much sweeter. She could be very forthright — her nickname wasn’t Krakatoa for nothing — but there was not that edge to her.’
To watch the duo on TV was enchanting; witnessing them in the same room in real life was more nerve-jangling, it seems.
‘They clashed, simple as that,’ says Mr Scott. ‘They were both such strong characters: loud, clever. I think it was clear that Clarissa was intellectually Jennifer’s superior.
‘Although Jennifer was incredibly intelligent in her own right, she didn’t have the formal education. It was like being in the presence of two prima donnas, each one trying to outdo the other. I think they were frightened of each other.’
Yet they knew that they were more powerful together than apart. ‘They adored the fame, revelled in it. And they did love doing the programmes.’
So why the need for separate hotels? Mr Scott says Clarissa felt uncomfortable with the heavy drinking that went on after a hard day’s work.
While Jennifer loved to knock back the whisky (usually with a Woodbine in hand), Clarissa, an alcoholic, could not drink.
One close friend, who knew both women well, even tells the Mail that their jolly bonhomie was purely an act for the cameras
‘She used to just sit there while the rest of the team got more and more raucous. She used to get angry about this — I think she felt left out.
‘Jennifer didn’t make any concession. She could manage to stop drinking for Lent (although she did drink angostura bitters in her tonic, which was kind of defeating the object) but she wouldn’t pass up a drink to make Clarissa feel more comfortable. I think Clarissa felt edged out. Eventually, a different hotel was the answer.’
Mr Scott met Jennifer at an art exhibition 50 years ago. She summoned him into conversation with the words: ‘Don’t pretend to look at the pictures. Come and talk to me’.
‘She was hilarious. She had this great booming voice, and she was huge and grand and terrifying, but endlessly entertaining.
‘She once got stopped by a policeman for parking her motorbike on double yellow lines. She boomed at him, in that big voice, “I am a spinster of Westminster and you are a mere boy, so off you go on your beat. I am going to Waitrose.’
It was clear she was a complex character, though, who had troublesome relationships with, well, pretty much everyone.
Dickson Wright survived her on-screen cookery partner, Jennifer Paterson, the other star of Two Fat Ladies, who died from cancer at the age of 71 in 1999, bring the programmes four-year run to an end
‘She hated — loathed — her mother, and her entire family,’ says Mr Scott.
‘She used to say the Patersons were frightful bores. She moved in with her uncle, Anthony Bartlett (who was a Gentleman at Arms to the Cardinal Archbishops of Westminster) but she could be horrible about him, too.’
Jennifer certainly straddled a baffling number of worlds: the Church, politics, publishing. But food was her first love.
She was first employed by Mr Scott as a chef for his agency offices. Then she got a job providing lunches at The Spectator magazine, where she thought nothing of interrupting high-level debates with the then editor, Peregrine Worsthorne, with her own forthright views.
‘She’d put the food down and then say, “Nonsense, Peregrine, you are talking absolute nonsense.”
She would ruffle everyone’s hair and call them “coochy coochy”. But everyone adored her.’
News of this larger-than-life woman with big opinions and a genuine flair for cookery reached legendary TV producer Pat Llewellyn (who later discovered Jamie Oliver) in the mid-Nineties.
Dickson Wrights most recent TV work was a short BBC 4 series in 2012 called Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
She was raving about another plus-sized and formidable foodie she had met at a party — Clarissa — when an acquaintance said she should meet Jennifer, who was even posher and even louder.
Llewellyn had the vision to pair them up and the result was TV gold.
For all their differences the pair had a lot in common: a shared religion, love of food and a history of troublesome relationships. Although Clarissa adored her mother, her relationship with her father — a surgeon to the royal household — was fraught.
At the height of her fame, she accused him of abuse, allegations disputed by her sister, Heather Stretton, who accused her of rewriting history for publicity.
The sisters had been estranged since 1980, when they fell out over their mother’s will.
It would be tempting to think that, in Jennifer, Clarissa found a replacement ‘sister’, one who was the same age as her own sibling (Heather, like Jennifer, was 20 years her senior) but who shared her two-fingers-to-convention approach to life. In some ways, she did. Mr Scott was first introduced to Clarissa by Jennifer and was struck by what kindred spirits they were.
Two Fat Ladies: Clarissa Dickson Wright, left, and Jennifer Paterson starred in the successful cookery show
‘Though they had completely different views about sex. Clarissa was always going on about men (her favourite story was about how she once had sex behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons).
‘Jennifer never did, although she did once show me a picture of herself as a young woman surrounded by six or seven men on a beach in Portugal, where she lived for a while.
‘She called them “my boys”. I think they were gay. She certainly thought everyone was gay, and took delight in outing people.
Dickson Wright, pictured at the University of Aberdeen in 1998, where she was its first female Rector
‘She did say something odd to me before she died though, along the lines of “Ian, I have never been troubled by lust before, but recently I’ve been attracted by some men.” ’
The other thing he found curious about the friendship was their vastly differing attitudes to money.
Dickson Wright, photographed in 1968, inherited a fortune but blew it after depression turned into alcoholism
‘While Jennifer died leaving a sizeable fortune, Clarissa squandered everything. The £1 million she inherited from her mother went on booze, but even when she was professionally successful, she struggled.
‘I can’t remember how many times she went bankrupt, and I couldn’t understand it. She was writing the same books, making the same programmes.
‘We used to wonder if she had a secret vice — gambling or drugs or something. But there was no sign of anything.’
Whatever, it rankled with Jennifer. On the day she confided in him about the loan — ‘I don’t remember how much it was for, £1,000 maybe’ — Mr Scott had gone to make her lunch.
‘She was always quite dramatic about everything. When you asked how she was, in the final weeks, she’d say: “dying, dying, DYYYING.”
‘I remember making her smoked salmon sandwiches. But she was very cross about the money, and that she wouldn’t get it back.’
Still, surely this was just the bluster of old friends. Wasn’t Clarissa devastated when she heard of Jennifer’s death?
‘Not really,’ he says. ‘And what’s been odd since is that when I met up with Clarissa — which I did from time to time because I really became very fond of her — we didn’t talk about Jennifer, even though she was the one who introduced us.’
Whatever the truth of their friendship, it is a union that worked. It made both women household names, and dearly loved.
And more than anything, this week their fans will want to believe that the Two Fat Ladies are together again, whether sparks are flying or not.
TV cook Clarissa Dickson Wright dies”
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