Old published stuff

Posted by Stewart Turner These days we'll only consume tomatoes if they look like freshly polished snooker balls. Knobbly carrots are sent straight off to the pig farm without so much as a five-minute swansong on That's Life . But change is in the air, inspiring the BBC to send a collection of celebrity chefs off to pull horrified faces in Lincolnshire lettuce fields. Their task? To prepare a banquet for 60 VIPS (including Bill Oddie and Lembit Opik) from food which was on the brink of being thrown away. Now here's a poser for you: What's worse than useless unless it's between 17 - 21cm long? A courgette, apparently. Thousands of them are thrown away every single day for failing to live up to our demanding expectations. Most depressing of all was a Kentish fisherman's haul of 200 delicious slip soles destined to be chucked because they're deemed too tiny for our dinner tables. I was particularly annoyed: it's barely a couple of weeks s...

Originally posted on Isle One Legend has it your average Guardian reader can slash a couple of decades off his life just by taking a wrong turning onto the mean streets of Cliftonville en route to Broadstairs. But it wasn’t always like this: up until a few decades ago this murky pocket of seaside deprivation was a highly desirable place to live – something that’s heartbreakingly evident on those rare days when the sun streams down through the huge sky, putting a sheen on some of the most beautiful Georgian and Victorian architecture you could ever hope to clap eyes on. Despite its obvious edginess and genuinely shocking levels of poverty, Cliftonville is one of the most enchanting places in the country, with a rich history and an architectural curiosity around every corner. If this place can’t turn itself around and become a brilliant place to live once again, surely nowhere can. The fact t...

Posted by Stewart Turner “I was morbid as a child,” admitted 19-year-old undertaker Paul Gillett at the start of last night’s Cutting Edge documentary. “If I saw a dead bird in the street, I wouldn’t play with it, but I’d go and have a look.” You can’t say the signs weren’t there early on, and sure enough, these days Paul makes his cash by shaving the faces and brushing the hair of dead bodies down at the local undertakers. It’s a creepy job, but someone’s got to do it, and luckily Paul loves it – so much so that he’s just started dating a fellow teen undertaker. During arm-in-arm strolls in the park the pair of them discuss messy sessions with the coroners and the best way to keep corpses’ eyelids open. What could be more romantic? Norwich 18-year-old Laura is an even more unlikely undertaker. She was bitten by the funeral bug after doing a week’s work experience when she was just 14, and has been enthusiastically marketing death ever since. Her employers have e...

posted by Stewart Turner Ever thought those utterly mundane events that clutter up our day-to-day existence would make compelling subjects for a hilarious new sitcom? Do you find yourself bent double with laughter when you spend 10 minutes looking for your car keys only to discover they were in your pocket all along? Do you split your sides every time you forget to tell the milkman you’re going on holiday for a fortnight? Clearly quite a few people at the BBC do. As you may have gleaned from the title, the action in this new sitcom centres round the thrilling half-hour when Roger (Alfred Molina) and Val (Dawn French) return home from work. The central plot of last night’s opener was a broken vacuum cleaner and a missing receipt, all of which led to a tiresome 10 minutes of the couple rifling through the contents of their “big drawer” and musing about all manner of subjects like death, door knockers and two-for-one Specsavers vouchers. Roger and Val are the only cast me...