‘Mutton should be hung for five and half weeks…..Yorkshire has always been renowned for baking. The even temperature of coal used in the ranges was much better than wood.’ Clarissa Dickson Wright knows a lot about traditional cooking. She favours local, seasonal ingredients and is delighted by the Wharfedale Game Pie, served at the Ilkley Moor Vaults where we are having lunch. ‘It’s beautifully cooked and topped with very good pastry.’ The chef, Joe McDermott looks relieved.
Clarissa Dickson-Wright
Clarissa is in Ilkley to promote her new book ‘Spilling the Beans’ which chronicles the events of her extraordinary life. The daughter of a famous surgeon and an Australian heiress, she describes how her alcoholic father could erupt into violent rages. ‘You don’t always appreciate the priceless enamel handle of the poker when you were being hit with it.’
Clarissa she has a formidable intelligence. Her father wanted her to go into medicine, but she took up law instead. ‘My father hated lawyers and I hated my father.’ It seemed a natural choice. She became the youngest woman to be called to the bar.
But disaster struck. Finding her beloved mother dead, Clarissa took a very large drink. She describes how ‘it seemed the answer to everything.’ She left the law and became an alcoholic.
Hers is not a rags to riches story. It’s the other way round. Left with an inheritance of £2.8 million, Clarissa blew it in 12 years – chartering yachts in the Mediterranean, private jets to take friends on holidays in the Caribbean and booze. ‘I could get through two bottles of gin a day and ended up sleeping on The Embankment’ she recalls.
It was cooking that saved her ‘I believe we all have one gift in life and mine is cooking.’ It also helped her forgive her father. ‘He was after all the gourmet. Talking about food at home was the only way to stop World War Three from breaking out.’
Clarissa loves Yorkshire. Her fight for the countryside and support of traditional Yorkshire food has made her a local hero. David Lishman, Ilkley’s award winning butcher says ‘Clarissa is wonderful. She champions good meat – the age of the animal, how long it is hung and the overall quality of what is sold.’
Her passion for the quality of meat has led to one honour of which she is most proud. This year she was received into the York Guild of Butchers. Princess Anne is the only other member of the Guild who is not a butcher. ‘It’s the only place I have ever been served freshly grated horse radish with bowls of cream and vinegar to make up one’s own relish to accompany roast beef,’ she says.
She campaigned vehemently against the ban on hunting and in 2001 she took to the saddle at the Salters Gate Farmers Hunt for the TV programme Clarissa and the Countryman.
There are also historic connections. In 1605 John and Christopher Wright, ancestors on her father’s side conspired with Guy Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot. ‘So who knows what might have happened if I had accepted Tony Blair’s invitation to cook for him – I could have finished the job off’ she chuckles. It’s no secret that she doesn’t like Tony Blair.
Her love of Yorkshire food extends to ‘Whitby kippers which are the best. Lamb and mutton grazed on heather moors, game and baking.’
People were a little alarmed when she turned up late for her celebrity lunch. She was spotted sneaking out of Betty’s. ‘I just couldn’t resist’ she chortled apologetically.
Dressed in voluminous scarlet trousers and a loose green, black and white striped blouse, her face is lined and worn, her blonde hair dishevelled, but her eyes are soft and blue and – well- kindly. She has not been ‘Anne Widdicombed’. Clarissa doesn’t need the camouflage of make up and clothes – she certainly does not need to hide her fatness. It is after all what she has become famous for.
Her views are strident – ‘Gordon Ramsay should have stuck with football – the language is better suited. I can’t stand Jamie Oliver; he has sold out to supermarkets.’
Clarissa has never worried what she said or did. ‘I got thrown out of the Brownies for putting anchovies in the chocolate cake,’ she announced gleefully. ‘I have always been a bit of a rebel.’ Perhaps this is why there is such affection between Clarissa and Yorkshire folk.
Clarissa lives in Scotland but research for her next book on the history of British food will bring her back. ‘Did you know the Brotherton library at Leeds University has the best archive of cookery books and manuscripts in the country?’ ’And who knows, when I am no longer famous, I may open another cookery book shop here in Yorkshire. I don’t think I could deal with ‘The Republic of Scotland”.’