Betty's Utility Room

Time demands that we catch up with all the programmes stacked up ominously on Sky Plus. Which this weekend included the BBC Four play Fear Of Fanny.

This was not a study into extensive research proving that a fear of fanny is an affliction suffered by at least eighty per cent of men who regularly use the internet. Heh heh. After all, everybody knows that already.

Nope, it was a black comedy based on the life of one of the first stars of British television, Fanny Cradock. Between the 1950's and mid 1970's she was a precursor to the celebrity chefs who annoy us to the back teeth today.

Not that I ever saw her on television. Cookery shows were unwatched in our house. As I've explained, er, somewhere else in the archive, my mother was not a keen cook, a "fault" she has passed on to me. What's the point of spending all that time in the kitchen, amassing loads of ingredients, chopping, grating, stirring, whisking, kneading, all the tedious minutiae of cooking? Yawn. Plus, you end up eating loads more food and turn into a huge lumbering sweatbox who dies of a heart attack at fifty! Great.

I seem to remember seeing her being interviewed on Jonathan Ross's show in the late 1980's, talking about the death of her husband. "I probably finished the old bugger orff. Good riddance, too" she declared. Tut tut, hardly the sort of thing you expect to hear from a sweet little old lady, is it?

Fanny was indeed known as something of a dragon, on and off set. On screen she was constantly nagging her unfortunate assistants and amiable, henpecked soak of a partner Johnnie. In some ways, they may have been the prototype for another couple who turned up at the end of the 1970's ...



Hmm ...

She had two illegitimate sons and sent them to live with their grandparents. She seems to have severed relationships with all of her family at some point or another. I don't know how much artistic licence was involved in the storyline, but it seems pretty true to life, judging by the Wikipedia entry which is well worth a read.

The dramatisation was quite good, all things considered. Still, there were one or two annoying points.

The play was attempting to show the "vulnerable" side of a hard, bossy woman. Well, what a surprise. All women who are considered to be a bit *frightening* in the public eye are subject to this kind of consideration, as they are obviously "damaged". Otherwise they would have put aside all their ambition to get married at the earliest opportunity and have half a dozen children, where they would have found true happiness.

How many times has it been "explained" to us that the reason Madonna has been so driven, singleminded and hardfaced is that her mother died at an early age? She may be powerful but there is obviously a, ahem, "damaged little girl" behind the fiery persona.

Funnily enough, aggressive, controlling men in the public eye are rarely subjected to such an examination. We're unlikely to see a play opening in the West End exploring the "vulnerabilities" behind Robert Maxwell's empire, imploring us to understand why he was a vicious, bullying cunt.

At the end of the play we see Fanny resident in a nursing home, eccentricities magnified to the power of ten, running amuck in the kitchen attempting to re-arrange the dreary food being prepared for lunch to her own ends, acting as if she was still on camera. It seems horribly like gloating to me: look how this ferocious woman has ended up! She rejected her friends and family and has ended up alone, unloved and completely mad!

Underneath it all, perhaps there is the same old moral to the story. If you are a woman who can't fit into the role of sweet, uncomplaining, demure housewife, mother and nurturer all sorts of terrible fates await you.

Not even being able to serve stuffed goose with all the trimmings will be able to save you.