BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS I will be appearing at Welbeck Farm Shop at 2pm and 3pm Saturday 24th November as a celebrity chef.
Along with my fellow 'Cooks About Town' star, Tracy Powell (who may or may not be appearing following a foot injury!) I will be first making venison sausages and then cooking a venison casserole, which the public will be given to try.
This will all be filmed for
www.worksopguardian.co.uk/food so if you can't make it, check it out there.
Chris.
I know, I know. I haven't done a blog on Pranks I Have Played yet.
It's coming soon. Formulating in my head like an evil, barbed joke. It'll be worth the wait.
For now, I thought you might like to see how my cooking has progressed from the days of cauliflower cheese and beefburgers (See blogs number 1 and 2 below - right down below).
Allow me to show you through the medium of video (oh yeah).
Click the following links
http://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/food/Chicken-curry-technique--VIDEO.3390611.jphttp://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/worksopvideo/Cooking-in-Clumber--Rabbit.3463144.jp http://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/food/Sausage-making-at-Welbeck-.3243775.jpWhat d'y reckon?
Scarily enough, I've been booked (provisionally) to appear with my co-cook Tracy Powell as a celebrity chef (!!!!!) at the Welbeck Farm Shop on the prestigious Welbeck Estate in Notts! This is due to be on the 23rd November and will mark a ridiculous rise through the cooking ranks from someone who produced "the worst meal in history" to a celebrated cook prancing around posh environs making things with venison and rabbit.
You see kids, anything is possible. Next stop Channel M!
Yours in grub,
Chris.
The Grand National - Part Two
(Part one of this article is below - read it first if you haven't already.)
So. Here we are again.
I apologise for having taken so long to get round to this sequel but I'm genuinely touched to see how many people have asked me when it's coming out - thanks.
My worry now is that after a Stone Roses second album-like delay in publishing this, there will be a Second Coming-like disappointment in the story.
And, to be fair, the main laughter bit is the hair-dying incident in the previous article. This is like trying to follow She Bangs The Drums with Love Spreads. But I will try.
We had to report to the university building very early in the morning in order to get the coach over to Liverpool for the Grand National at Aintree.
So bleary-eyed we travelled north west in our uniforms (which I have already described).
You may remember that a large part of the previous article refers to the hillarious hair-dying incident, which had left me with very long, bright orange hair.
This was only a few hours in the past at this stage and I was still going through the mental anguish it had caused. Funnily enough it had never occured to me to give the National a miss. Maybe it should have done.
Part of the uniform was an officious-looking peaked cap such as the kind a member of the California Highway Patrol or, say, a milkman might wear.
I was extremley grateful for this small mercy as the hat covered up most of my Fraggle Rock hair. I say most, because I still had charming long bits that curled down in tendrils under each ear like cascading Iron Brew.
When we arrived at the Grand National it started to become apparent that this was not going to be 'a bit of a laugh' and easy money. It would instead turn out be one of the longest days of any of our lives and a soul-destroyingly hellish experience. And I'm not just talking about being in Liverpool.
We were met by the boss man - big Mick. I'd describe him as looking very much like actor Warren Clarke from the detective series Dalziel and Pascoe but twice as phsically imposing and not as cheerful.
I had thought to myself on the way up to Liverpool that the hair-dying experience could not get any worse. But it was about to.
Probably it's about time to explain that I was a bit of a prankster, I liked playing silly little jokes on people. Nothing nasty, just funny. Funny to me.
I have already decided that at a later stage (probably much later if this one's anything to go by) I will do an article entitled Pranks I have Played. There have been some absolute belters along the way. There will even be diagrams drawn in pencil.
The shower prank is the best. Or the death prank - the police still don't know about that one. That's a joke, officer.
But the two pranks I played in the run-up to the Grand National were not particularly clever, and one of them backfired upon me like a D-reg Astra.
The first of the jokes I played that day was to tell John we were not allowed to take any food or money to the event for 'security reasons'.
This meant he wouldn't be able to eat for the fifteen or so hours we were out of Sheffield.
You know, I've just read that last sentence back and, even though I really did laugh quite hard at the memory, I have stopped laughing now and concluded that it wasn't funny. It was just mean. Sorry John.
Just before I move on from that prank, the funniest bit was when he came over to me during the day and, in conspiritorial tones, whispered: "I've sneaked these in" as he showed me a crushed pack of Polo mints with about two-and-a-half Polos left in it. He'd beaten the system!
I kept a straight face and then went off and bought myself a burger while almost laughing myself sick.
It wasn't long before John would have his revenge - and it was boss man Mick that would dish it out.
As I've said Neil, John and I had picked up our uniforms from Uni and taken them back to the house. But when they were not looking I switched them around.
John was a fair bit taller than me and I thought it would be funny if I changed them so his was too small and he had to have his trousers at half-mast.
I thought having my uniform slightly too big was more than acceptable for this jape - it was something I was willing to live with in return for John's being too small. (I actually remember having that thought process - I'm much more grown-up now.)
So you have to picture me now: I have on a security jacket that has sleeves coming down way over my hands, bright orange Ronald Mcdonald hair (long enough for me to chew the fringe) stuffed into a Salvation Army cap, and a deathly white palour caused by a three-hour coach trip and the diet described in the first of these 'amusing' articles.
Yup, pretty cool.
So what would be the worst thing that could happen? Well, in my opinion it was this...
Sergeant Mick suddenly bellowed: "Right you 'orrible shower" (or something like that) "Line up for an inspection."
An inspection?
"Line up along here and I'm going to see if you're smart enough to go out."
So we did.
Mick started to walk along the line fastening peoples' top buttons and removing fluff from their shoulders.
Then he reached me. And stopped.
At this point the phrase 'self-concious' could never have been more pitifully inadequate to describe one's feelings. I remember thinking 'just don't take my hat off. Please don't take my hat off'.