Setting the Scene

This short, light-hearted glimpse into the world of television was inspired by an amusing comment my father-in-law made. I hope you’ll find it entertaining.

This is a fictional story. Any resemblance to reality is pure coincidence.

The audio version is on Anchor: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e1k5adf

Setting the Scene

I was struggling with a pair of oven gloves; I shall never forget the day, vividly recalling it with a mixture of horror and amusement. You can imagine what it’s like behind the scenes on the set of a television cookery programme – the last minute nerves, the tantrums, the tears when the jelly comes out of the Eiffel Tower mould and ends up looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or, worse still, a collapsed London Bridge, completely spoiling the producer’s lunch for the third consecutive day.

Anyway, I had just managed to pull on the fabric thermal barriers when the director wandered over to me and said, “You’re not intending to actually wear those, are you?”

To say I was shocked would be underestimating the turmoil of emotions that beset me. I looked at him, a well-educated, quietly spoken man who had displayed considerable finesse in the short time I had known him, yet he had split an infinitive as if doing so were an everyday occurrence! Nevertheless, I decided against correcting him and just shook my head and smiled. He seemed more than a little tense, despite having issued instructions to many a crew filming in some bizarre situations: halfway down a well, at a tandem race spanning three of the Hebridean islands, inside a larger-than-life cardboard igloo in the rain, to name but a few. As I didn’t want to push him over the edge, I decided to choose another pair of oven gloves.

“Better get going now, love,” he said with a smile. “On air in five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” I gasped, in desperation. “But I thought filming wasn’t due to start for another hour.”

“It isn’t,” he replied, then went on explain. “It’s not due on air in five minutes; I am. I always need a few puffs of oxygen to keep me going through these things. It’s like filming in Mexico City or two thirds of the way up the Andes.”

With that, he was off and I wandered back to my dressing room to sift through the assortment of oven gloves left for my perusal.

I looked at the pair that had caused Don, the director, to lose all sense of English grammar and had to agree with him. The colour scheme was not so much tasteless as taste-free, in fact garish, and I shuddered to think of myself appearing on the nation’s television screens and, maybe later, in home and cookery magazines, wearing what can only be described as the depth of fashion. However, the show must go on. With the viewing public’s current interest in celebrity chefs and all that surrounds them, I had to make an effort, so returned to the job of finding some more appropriate oven gloves for the filming sessions in the following fortnight.

I tried to calm myself before my first (and possibly last) appearance on television, but all that came to mind were cookery disasters from my own kitchen – the onion sponge cake, my numerous attempts to bake scones, which turned out like insipid biscuits, not to mention the chocolate Swiss roll and its diagonal descent along the baking tray before it hit the side of the oven, only to fall apart! In my rush after cleaning the oven the day before, I had inadvertently placed all the shelves at an angle, and I was beginning to wonder whether these culinary mishaps might combine with others for a series of their own!

Before I knew it, I was attired in another pair of oven gloves – dark blue with silver stars – and with the cameras turning I was making my debut on a catwalk. As I displayed the oven gloves from all angles, I vowed that in future I would keep to myself any ideas, however light-hearted, that occurred to me concerning new television programmes. My flippant remark about featuring someone modelling oven gloves in the next cookery series had been regarded as a stroke of genius by my husband, the show’s producer, who had floated the idea to the hierarchy of the production company. With their acceptance, he had gone on to insist on my appearing as the model! Whether I shall last the course is open to speculation. Although the initial reviews were quite complimentary, for how long can a novelty hold the attention of critics and viewers? Only time will tell…

© Chasqui Penguin, 2021

Twitter: @ChasquiPenguin