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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 US 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[edit]

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 motorcycle 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 and an all-girls' school, where they prepared large meals, often with unusual ingredients.

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Paterson's uncle, Anthony Bartlett, was Gentiluomo to the CardinalArchbishop of Westminster, and so one episode was videotaped at Westminster Cathedral and another at 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][failed verification]}

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[edit]

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' (erroneously attributing the song to The Andrews Sisters). They revelled in cooking at grand locations, such as at Lennoxlove House near Edinburgh.

Deaths[edit]

Paterson died of lung 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 in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 15 March 2014 from pneumonia induced by an undisclosed illness.^[6]

In popular culture[edit]

• 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, lard, a packet of Sugar Twin and blackstrap molasses.
• In 1997, The Two Ronnies made a comeback as a duo dressed The 'Two Fat Ladies' on the Royal Command Performance that year, making their stage entrance on a motorcycle and sidecar.
• 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[edit]

'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[edit]

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[edit]

Series 1[edit]

Series 2[edit]

Series 3[edit]

Series 4[edit]

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

References[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'Two Fat Ladies'. Optomen International. Archived from the original on 26 October 2015. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
2. ^'Healthy Recipes'. tipsions.com. Retrieved 30 July 2020.^{[permanent dead link]}
3. ^'BUBBLE AND SQUEAK (Two Fat Ladies)'. RecipeSource. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
4. ^Farndale, Nigel (13 September 2009). 'Clarissa Dickson Wright: 'They don't call me Krakatoa for nothing''. Telegraph. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
5. ^'UK Two Fat Ladies star dies'. BBC News. 10 August 1999. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
6. ^'BBC News - TV cook Clarissa Dickson Wright dies'. Bbc.co.uk. 17 March 2014. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
7. ^'SNL Transcripts: Brendan Fraser: 02/13/99'. Snltranscripts.jt.org. 13 February 1999. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
8. ^TV.com. 'Gilmore Girls Episode Guides'.
9. ^'Amazon.co.uk: two fat ladies: Books'. www.amazon.co.uk.
10. ^'New DVDs: 'Two Fat Ladies,' in full - DVD Spin Doctor'. Dvdspindoctor.typepad.com. 26 July 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2014.

External links[edit]

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

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