Judith Wills
Nigella Lawson and her weight. Now there is an endlessly fascinating topic on so many levels.
This year, is she thinner or fatter? This week, is she fatter or thinner? This TV series, this book, are we to see total voluptuousness, or toned-down/toned-up curvaceousness? Does she tell the truth about her size, or porky pies? Does she diet, does she overeat, or does everything that happens to her body just happen, on its own with no input whatsoever from the pouty one – my favourite theory?
Wow, this topic - it's so exciting. Without it our daily papers and weekend supplements would be THIS much thinner themselves, and the online gossip sites and chatrooms would almost fall silent.
And here I am, adding a little bit this week to the great ocean of the unstoppable Nigella publicity machine. Why?
Well, I couldn't help myself. She really is an enigma. Let's look at the facts:
1. She's been 'curvy' ever since she's being doing cookery on TV, no denying it.
2. Last year her 'curvy' turned to lots and lots of surplus pounds, as shown in her wetsuit/burquini on the beach. Even die-hard Nigella-figure fans seemed to agree she could now officially be called 'fat'.
3. Nigella images vanished from our papers and screens and eventually we got over the shock of (2.).
4. Late August, 2012 - Nigella has a new book and TV series to promote and thus she re-appears. But several of her pounds have, in the meantime, done a vanishing act.
That much we know. Here's where it gets really, really exciting.
Nigella claimed back in April that she has lost weight due to her bunions being removed. Surely they weren't that big? No – apparently she couldn't make the journey to the fridge so frequently as before, so she couldn't eat so much cake. (Funny, that, I keep my cake in the cake tin, it's not so good when it's too cold, unless it's refrigerator cake, of course.)
Then it's rumoured she's been 'doing' the very expensive top people's weight loss system, Bodyism Genesis where you pay £30,000 or more to drink water and get motivated.
Now she says she gets fat when she makes a TV series because of the stress and she can't sleep. She says this makes the weight come on with no change of diet. So my theory that her body has a weight life of its own, see above, is sounding like the winner right now, but that could soon alter.
Meanwhile, can I just say something? Could not her weight gains when she makes TV series be just a little to do with the food that she cooks – and presumably eats - while she's doing it? Her latest offerings are her own version of Italian. How about double cream chocolate and meringue ice cream with chocolate sauce? Calabrian meat lasagne with hard-boiled eggs and mozzarella? Pavlova – no fruit, just the meringue and whipped cream? Chocolate, almond and olive oil cake? Coffee ice cream in a large white bun?
A quick look back at her other cookbooks shows page after page of high-fat, high-cal treats.
Come on Nigella, perhaps it's time to do a Hairy Bikers and show us how to eat and pout and enjoy, without all the heart-attack-on-a-plate dishes that could, just could, have something to do with your weight problems.