Clarissa Dickson Wright - Spilling the Beans

Review by Corinna Christopher on show 4th Feb.
A well-established cook, Clarissa rose to fame with the TV series "Two Fat Ladies" with her friend Jennifer Paterson.
This comprehensive biography starts off with her early life lived on a fairly grand scale. Her mother was an Australian heiress and her father a brilliant surgeon. Her two sisters and one brother were all much older than Clarissa and she was very attached to her mother. Both Clarissa and her mother were physically abused by her father who drank far too much and became out of control so that the home was not a happy place.
Clarissa, a clever girl, was determined to pursue a career in the law and in spite of no support from her father became one of the youngest barristers ever called to the bar.
when her mother died she was grief-stricken and her life spiralled into diaster with total dependency on drink. It took a long time to full recovery and together with help from AA and her cookery skills she eventually gained some peace and well-being.
Along the way she made some good friends and contacts and there is much name dropping of names we recognise. She also was an enthusiastic supporter of all things pertaining to the countryside and made a tv series with her friend Johnny Scott on country matters. Having squandered her original inheritance she was also made bankrupt later on so one can only conclude that she was not too good on financial matters.
It was quite an easy book to read but somehow lacked any sparkle and would perhaps only appeal to a limited audience - maybe those with an interest in cooking and the country.
Review by Corinna

Feb 4th 2010

Guests today: Corinna Christopher, Maggie Perkovic & Babs Simpson.
Books being reviewed:
Alone in Berlin Hans Fallada, Spilling the Beans Clarissa Dickson Wright
stephen bogarts autobiography, Kisses on a Postcard terence frisby

Corrinna, when I was reading the reviews on Saturday morning I was impressed with the great acclaim it received. It was also an amazing coincidence that I had watched, the previous evening, the film Valkyrie. Although this film, starring Tom Cruise, is about one of the assassination attempts on Hitler, it brings home the point that there were many Germans who disagreed with what Hitler was doing and how it made them appear to other countries.
The authors life was pretty unbelievable too!