» Celebrities are humans too
Katie discovers that despite being famous, celebrities have feelings nonetheless
Five minutes into the conversation it’s already become apparent that Clarissa Dickson Wright doesn’t like Jamie Oliver. I’m pleased.
As the fat lady launches into a a vitriolic attack on the cockney wide boy, I sit back and take notes. Smiling.
It’s par for the course when talking to a celebrity to see if you can get them to slag off another one. Boris, what do you think of Ken? Cameron, what do you reckon to Brown?
“We turned them down – I think supermarkets are the Antichrist, and Jamie is a sell-out”
Kate, what’s up with Naomi? But usually it’s never this easy. Clarissa DW is sitting in the corner at a book awards party. And she is reading a book.
“It is a book party so it seemed the right thing to do,” she explains, helpfully putting it to the side for us to chat.
I slip in gently. And flatteringly. Asking about her recent autobiography – conveniently I have an ‘in’ because my friend Tanya just interviewed her about it for the Daily Mail.
We move on to her life, the potential for retirement, and eventually we wing our way onto celebrity chefs. Immediately, she’s off.
“I am not a chef I am a cook. Call me a chef and I’ll sue,” a grinning, indignant Clarissa blurts out. So it’s all too tempting to ask her what she makes of those whose living has been carved from this caveat.
“What? Jamie Oliver?” she prompts, and from there she’s on a role: She tells me she rejected a £2million offer from Sainsbury’s to promote its products. “We turned them down – I think supermarkets are the Antichrist, and Jamie is a sell-out.”
Even the supermarket pin-up’s attempts to change school children’s diets doesn’t impress her.
“Jamie Oliver hasn’t done anything Jennifer Patterson [her fellow Fat Lady] didn’t do years ago – and she didn’t sell her soul to Sainsbury’s.
The only thing those children learnt was to swear. Any schoolboy can put on a pair of striped trousers and a white top and drizzle things and call themselves a chef now”, she says.
Her rant about Oliver lasts almost 10 minutes. By the end I am touting not only a notebook swamped with notes but a huge grin.Tomorrow I will write a story about how much she hates Oliver: my editor will be pleased; my rent will get paid.
And this is exactly what happens the next day. But something else does too. For when Clarissa’s comments appear in print an email arrives from Sally – Jamie Oliver’s mum. An email that turns into a phone call that turns into an hour of discussions.
Naturally she’s angry – much worse, she’s lovely. We talk about Jamie, his life, their relationship. She tells me how cross he’ll be if he finds out she called, she talks about how Jamie became a chef and tells me anecdotes about making his packed lunches for school.
She talks about how proud she is of him, how hard he’s worked and how shattered he was as he worked night and day on his school dinners series, genuinely committed to trying to make a difference.
“I know Jamie is perfectly capable of looking after himself, but he is not at all bitchy and has never done anything to Clarissa,” she explains sweetly, ‘He worked so hard during the first 18 months of his campaign; I saw him utterly exhausted and at times completely overwhelmed by the ideals he set himself. You may think he has succeeded or failed, but he has unarguably made a difference.’
And so has she. She has reminded me celebrities are humans too.
