MsMarmitelover

Supper clubs - ‘underground’ restaurants where paying guests do the Come Dine With Me thing in someone else’s home without the sordid business of reciprocating, are the eating trend that ate Britain. Based on Cuba’s ‘paladar’ culture, the best examples feel like a clandestine 80’s rave/ cabaret/ shebeen at which you also happen to be fed like a prince. To the supper club faithful, to eat at the London abode of ex-punk/ anarchic cook Kerstin Rodgers is akin to a pilgrimage to Mecca - make that Noma. Known to her 7,000 Twitter fans as MsMarmitelover, she’s just published a quirky guide to the genre packed with sound DIY supper club advice, ‘I want!’ recipes and anecdotes - such as ‘hot’ guest Hardeep Singh Kholi, stripping off to stir curry (and unexpected longings) in MsMarmite’s pans. Duly inspired (by the book, not the possibility of Hardeep spooning my bhuna), toqued-up and table set, I’m praying I don’t poison my first punters as I dream about riches beyond Ramsay. 

(Supper Club By Kerstin Rodgers: Collins £25)

The Only Way Is Essex: Official Guide

A friend’s new junior receptionist, Billericay-born and bred, recently enquired whether ‘Easter Sunday is on a Monday this year.’ Bless! Could Simple be the make-up remover of choice for your average Essex girl? On the back of the new series, here’s the official guide to how to live it large like a Loughton lass. Let’s see? A frock from Miss Piggy Modes, towering Loo-Boo-’ans, a face like a baboon's behind, fake tits that would protect you in a 150 mph full on car crash and a spray tan that screams ‘radioactive carrot.’ Veneered and vajazzled, you aim to cop off with a bit of class at Faces nightclub - Jack Tweed’s mate Mark, a (stud) muffin with all the sex appeal of one of Nanny Pat’s half-baked sausage plaits? Given the cast’s communication skills, what you get are lots of pretty (damn scary) cast pictures and few words of more than one syllable. No? Shut up!

http://tinyurl.com/46nolex

EightBit.Me

Will Twitter-based social networking gizmo/ iPhone app EightBit.Me capture the public’s imagination? Explained to me as ‘like foursquare squared’, I worry I may be 2square to appreciate its possibilities. There again, at the time of its invention, I couldn’t see how the wheel might enrich my existence. So, silencing my Luddite inner voice, I say ‘tell me more, dude!’ First, you recreate yourself as an old skool computer game-style 8-bit character - in my case, Woody from Toy Story in Allan Carr’s bins and an Orphan Annie wig is a vast improvement on the real McCoy - then your pixelated mini-me roams a realm where checking into venues and Tweetable ‘shouts’ win prizes and….. hold on! Why am I concerned with such vacuous ventures?  Didn’t I used to have a life? Friends that weren’t just avatars? Stop the world, I want to get off...preferably, on activities non-virtual. Besides, the backlash has already begun (see http://.eightshit.me/) 

Blogjammed

I’m a sucker for an enlightening blog: Southern Sudan's Northern Soul Scene; 2,000 Ways With Wasabi; Big Fat Gay Inuit Weddings. The problem with the ultimate form of vanity self-publishing is that too many blogs are just too ruddy wordy. Bookmarked for future reference, are hundreds I’ll never actually find time to read. Blog-jammed, I feel anxious (am I missing The Next Big Thing?) and simultaneously narked (life was a breeze before we got enmeshed in the Web). Self-important food and fashion bloggers are among the worst offenders. I could hunt down, cook and scoff an organic, sustainably sourced, twenty-course Mughal feast faster than it takes some Marina-manqué to describe her ‘unique dinning (sic) experience’ at a Glossop gastro/gastritis-pub’s all-you-can-eat buffet. Pics and captions, not a thesis, are all we need from an alt Emmanuelle Alt to appreciate Lanvin’s new collection. Blog, but blog concisely, you verbose bluggers! 

Rastamouse

Spare me the controversy surrounding reggae ridim king Rastamouse and his band, Da Easy Crew. The new hit CBeebies animation is currently enrapturing rugrats, not to mention big kids like Lily Allen and Dizzee Rascal too. Despite RM’s admirable mission to ‘make bad tings good’, publications such as The Guardian wonder ‘Is Rastamouse a righteous rodent or rank stereotype?’ Outraged of Tunbridge Wells rants about Jamaican patois corrupting the mother tongue. Please! One of the joys of English is its willingness to evolve by absorbing other cultures’ lingo, capisce? Others, such as Reggae Reggae Sauce's Levi Roots, reportedly,  condemn Rastafarians being portrayed as mice (as opposed to lions, presumably) as blatantly racist.  Get over yourselves! Rastamouse is a ranking role model, the cutest, cuddliest mega-star since that (Russian) meerkat. Reespek to his creator, author Michael de Souza, a proud Rastafarian.

The New Lady Gaga

However soulless I may find her manipulatively manufactured, over-produced yodelling, I get Gaga’s pop appeal, but those ‘envelope pushing’ get-ups? Fail! To a true style icon -  Anna Piaggi, Issy Blow or Elsa Schiaparelli who was working Gaga’s lobster look back in the 1930s - it comes naturally... and effortlessly. Ms Germanotta’s pose is clumsy, contrived and cynically sensationalist ; like La Ciccone, before her, a homely bridge and tunnel New Yorker desperate for a brand-building gimmick. Meat dress? Miss Steak!  Sparky British discovery Jessie J - next up on ‘the new Lady Gaga’ comparison conveyor belt, book-ended by Nicki Minaj (a Kylie Minaj tribute act?) Ke$ha and Natalia Kills  - reckons old Poker Face has set the bar so high, other female artists seem boring by comparison. A dressed-down Jess’s acoustic performance on Jools Holland was the real deal, her Gaga tribute vid for Do It Like A Dude? Now, that really is boring! 

Ned Style

 ’We called the new baby Ned,’ says a Lib-Dem voting, Guardian reading, London pal. For Ned’s sake, I hope the child never attends uni in Scotland. For, north of Carlisle, NEDS implies non-educated delinquent 'schemies' - scourge of the Bearsden/ Morningside genteel classes who live in fear of being ‘chibbed’ for crack spends by tooled-up, rickets-y youth with in trackies with track marks all over their spotty, self-tattooed skin. As fashion so often takes its cue from film and TV -  if you had a tenner for every Mad Man manqué out there, you could buy up all of Greenock, Giffnock and Port Glasgow , should you so desire - how long before the streets are awash with doppelgängers from Peter Mullan’s Neds? For pure 70s period effect, adopt flares, long leatherette coat, feather cut hair and a penchant for kissing, Glasgow style. Alternatively, take a masterclass in contemporary Ned-ism courtesy of The Wee Man at http://tinyurl.com/cqwuky Either way, not a good look.

Anti-Social, moi?

For me, it was love at first sight: twenty years on, I’m still besotted with my sexy Mac. That’s Mac as in not-a-PC, equally addictive machines according to users. When not developing curvature of the spine, hunched over lap-or-desktop catching up on Corrie, comparing the market.com, off my face on Facebook or marveling at YouTube clips demonstrating Peaches Geldof’s  command of English - y’know? the one at http://tinyurl.com/y9a7xc5 - I’m tweeting utter twollox. Enough! This obsessive relationship is unhealthy, as my stranger-to-the-gym bod demonstrates. Could salvation lie in the software equivalent of Antabuse, a drug designed to deflect alkies from the cooking sherry?  Anti-Social,  networking block software available to download, promises to deny (s)Mac addicts their daily fix. For PC junkies, there’s Freedom. Either way, isn’t it time to get a life that’s not 99% virtual?

http://anti-social.cc/

Nigella Quick Collection App

What could be more wickedly delicious than Nigella vibrating in a lucky chap’s trouser pocket? (A rabid rat chewing his 'nads off, I say) For those who find her sugar-coated patter a turn-on, download the cook-teaser to your iPhone for just £4.99. As the domestic goddess ain’t ever going to drizzle and lick her way around your sad bachelor kitchen, this app is the next best thing to the real thing - even if  'real' isn't an adjective I readily associate with Ma Saatchi's TV shtick.  For those short on time but big on taste, the application promises advice, inspiration and recipes for super-quick weekday suppers. Hopefully, these include her 'squink risotto'. But as Nigella is like Marmite -  love it / hate it - reviews at the iTunes store are somewhat mixed. ‘Her linguine with lemon, garlic and thyme mushrooms just smiled at me’; ‘not a PATCH on Jamie Oliver's’; ‘kinda screams money grabbing and taints her brand’ - just some of the opinions ventured. Do I detect that some disappointed customers rate it a wee bit on the  cr-app side? How beastly! Time to comfort yourself with a Big.Hot. Steaming. Mug of yummy cocoa, Nigella. 

This Week at Waitrose I'm hoping to find..........