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..........

More oil, Madam?

Tradition dictates that Britain’s Italian waiters grind their crotches in unison with pepper mills bigger than the Leaning Tower of Pisa and enquire, all oily slick, if ‘la signorina’ fancies anything else? Their act is cheesier than mozzarella, but as they are merely confirming our prejudice of Milan man as a harmless bum-pinching Latin Lothario out of Carry On Up The Tiber, it’s dismissed as all part of the trattoria tradition. When it comes to home-grown British waiters, however, we expect Basil Fawlty or worse, to have mentored them. So what to think of Pizza Express, now reportedly training staff in the gentle art of flirtation? Minefield! Come-hither looks over the lasagne? Extra sauce with your pasta? That’s strictly for Continentals. I see trouble ahead if other chains adopt this initiative. Imagine the scene around midnight at the nearest nosherie: ‘Coffee, tea or me?’ winks Romford Romeo waiter. Cue lagered-up of Luton, ‘Oi, tosser! It’s the salad that’s supposed to be fresh. Look at my missus like that again and I’ll tear those dough balls to shreds!’ 

Political Comedians

(Doris Karloff - Hell mend her!)

Once, has-been MPs quietly faded into obscurity or spent their dotage dozing in the Lords. No more! Now, they want to be entertainers. The trend took off when Neil Hamilton and battleaxe Christine, became a sort of peripatetic Punch & Judy show. Next, came George 'The Cat' Galloway in his red leotard - possibly THE most embarrassing five minutes of  TV ever, from which I am yet to recover -  followed by Andrew Neil’s resident stooges, Abbott and Costello - sorry, Portillo - who surely have a future in panto once failed Labour leaderine Diane departs da House. The latest political comedians are Lib-Dem oddball, Lembit Opek - whose stand-up routine is, by all accounts, as cringeworthy as his turn on Come Dine With Me - and Strict(ly) virgin Ann Widdi-Waddle attempting to reinvent herself as our favourite cuddly aunt - like we’ve forgotten Doris Karloff’s toxic Tory horror show. Whither next? MP Alan Keen and defeated MP/ wife, Ann, camping it up, Kim and Aggie style, as ‘Mr & Mrs Expenses’, sifting through members’ claim forms on a Westminster special of How Clean is Your House?     

True Blood For Ya Bluds

The shops are full of orange and black tat. Must be Hallowe'en. And, in keeping with the season, what red blooded young male fan of emo-friendly Tv tosh True Blood wouldn’t fancy a Sookie on one of these babies? Aka ‘V-Juice’, the synthetic life blood that flows through Channel 4’s camp vamp-fest, this soft drink, described to me as ‘like sugary Fanta’ (nice!), is what to break out with your bluds whenever you tune in to telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, aka Anna Paquin, the hit show’s bodacious heroine. The manufacturer's PRs - who described the fizzy potion as ‘like sugary Fanta’ (because you sooo want that! ) - suggest using tit in various specially-created vodka cocktails such as Fangbanger, Death On The Beach and Plasmapolitan, perfect for Hallowe'en (apparently). The price of each four pack is a mortifying £19.99: for that, I expect nothing less than the elixir of eternal youth. What's that about marketing Muppets sucking another TV series dry? 

Scent To Try Us?

It seems celebrity is merely the means to an end. Forget the talent -or distinct lack thereof -  that first propelled you to fame, it’s all about becoming a money-spinning überbrand and milking it like cash cow Katie Price who is unleashing yet another perfume aimed at Poundland princesses. Now, I totally get why a bloke might fancy firing into someone who smells of Hilary Duff, Kate Moss or J-Lo, hotties with pongs to peddle, but the Pricey don’t seem righty! Anyhow, from October 25th, you too can douse yourself in Precious Love - ‘a tribute to eternal love’, something she’d know all about as Peter Andre - who, stealing a march, launches Mysterious Girl For Women (huh?) tomorrow - will tell you. The latest Jordan juice comes in ‘a bottle that represents her life’ (cheap? plastic? see-through?) ‘with a frosted centre’ (you don’t say!) and ‘topped with her signature diamond cr**’..or was that ‘cap’? Victoria; Paris; Coleen; Chanelle Hayes: what next? L by Maureen from Driving School? Night Gusset by Amy Wino? Chip and Chavvi di Katona? `Seriously wrongpong.

Fashioniseateries

Fashionistas rejoice! Buoyed by the success of a Vogue Café, GQ Bar and Tatler Club in Moscow - a dump formerly so starved of fashion outlets, its grateful bling-crazy citizens' sartorial choices make Katie Price look like Grace Kelly by comparison -  publishers, Condé Nast, are reportedly looking at a global roll out for their licensed concept. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there once a Vogue Cafe where now stands Itsu, in the same Hanover Square building as the publisher’s London HQ?  No matter, fashion exists on a diet of regurgitated trends, so bring it on again, boys!. To the marketing wallahs at Condé N, it seems restaurants are ‘a natural way to extend our brand’: this, despite my supposition that the spaghetti-thin noodles featured in their titles' pages exist on a diet of Evian, Marlboro Lights and gossip and that US Vogue’s pencil-like bobbed boss, Anna Wintour, would surely never resort to anything as common as eating out in public. Over a decade after New York and London’s Fashion Cafés sank like soufflés, despite the best efforts of Naomi, Claudia and Elle, the world has become one vast style-obsessed global village. The label-loving diners of Luton, Lanark and Llanelli are surely clamouring to shell out on fashionable suppers of three steamed edamame beans and half an egg-white omelette. As for those GQ bars, ‘honey, crème de menthe? With your complexion?’ Divine! Let’s hope the profits amount to more than a big fat size zero.  

Hollywood(en) Remakes

Most Americans never venture abroad. In fact, very few even have passports. After all, didn't they move the Eiffel Tower and  the pyramids of E-Jipt to Vegas? Could such insularity explain Yankee antipathy towards non-English language films, manna to studios that repackage world cinema for Mikey and Miley Mall-Rat’s consumption? But why do so many slightly more mondaine Brits ('yeh we've been to Benidorm, innit?') also lap up Hollywood(en) retreads? The ensuing car crash when Tim Story hijacked Jean-Luc Besson’s Taxi; Richard Gere’s vague turn as nouvelle vague icon Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless; the leaden Vanilla Sky: remakes rarely shine. Will David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo really improve on the enthralling (subtitled) original? I admit, Brits occasionally play their part in cooking up a Stateside turkey. Mercifully, Lina Wertmüller as imagined by Guy Ritchie (and ‘star’ Madge) was deservedly Swept Away at the box office. The latest such Hollywood horror in cinemas is Francis Veber’s appetising French comedy, Le Dîner de Cons, regurgitated as Dinner For Schmucks. If you’re schmuck enough to fork out on indigestible tripe, go armed with Rennies - that's Pepto Bismol, or near enough, to my American friends.

FaFoBas

To fill their pages, gossip mags have created a monster: the FaFoBa. That’s those Famous For B***** all, basically (see also ‘nonebrities’). Cretinous reality show losers; witless Wags; famous parents' in-ya-face offspring with zilch talent (you know who you are P, P & K)| and myriad desperate red carpet cockroaches that would attend the opening of bowels: such is the Z list fodder whose only press mention would otherwise be a three line appearance in their local rag’s death notices. Quoted recently in Grazia, voici dress-up dolly Kim (pictured), of US reality-TV Über-FaFoBas, The Kardashian sisters whose 4.7 million followers on Twitter, if rounded up and culled, would not be missed.  ‘Our family has baggage, but like Louis Vuitton baggage you always want it.’ She has a point. It seems Britain has grown an insatiable appetite for the minutiae of the planet’s most pointless baggages’ lives. Inevitably, the bit we relish most is when, their fifteen minutes up, Kim and her like are dumped in the lost celebrity office along with their LV trunks. Call it FaFobafreude.

Slick Photography?

On the pristine sands of The Hamptons, St Tropez and Sardinia this summer, debate has raged among the fashionable beau peeps (rhymes with…) about photographer Steven Meisel’s recent work for Italian Vogue. Is his Water and Oil shoot art as political commentary or just sensationalism in very poor taste? Basically, the snapper’s idea was to use a beautiful model juxtaposed against an approximation of the ravaged American shoreline - a metaphor for environmental rape, perhaps? If endless imagery of stricken avian life struggling hopelessly for survival didn’t resonate with Voguettes, the sight of Kirsten Macmenamy, clad in ludicrously expensive couture smeared in nasty gunk that even the best dry cleaner would not shift, surely would? I’m not saying all fashionistas are shallower than the polluted waters lapping the Gulf of Mexico’s shores, but when one of their feather-brained number tells me - without a hint of irony - that ‘this season’s palette of oil and tar and petrol blue is to die for,’ you have to wonder which bird is the most tragic.