Only Fools and Small Courses

Janssen? Jason? - Let's call the whole thing off!



Be honest, have you ever asked David Jason for his recipe for Italian risotto? I know I haven’t! Then again, I’m not one of his friends and it is they, he tells us in the first in a new series of adverts for M&S “fud”, who often tell him he “must” break his wall of silence and reveal the secrets of the culinary creation.

Do you want to know what I think? I think either Dave is a liar or he is a desperately unhappy and harassed man, badgered, pestered, harangued - day in, day out, week in, week out - by those supposedly closest to him, pleading, begging, cajoling, demanding, ringing him in the wee small hours, knocking on his door the moment they see his car pull up on the drive, accosting him in the post office, cornering him at Variety Club lunches, relentlessly pursuing him, hounding him, tracking him to the ends of the earth, all on a God-sent quest…..to get the recipe for his risotto!

Turns out, as it happens, Dave doesn’t knock up this gelatinous, noduled gloop himself anyway. No, he buys it ready-made from Marks & Spencer’s!!! I s’pose that’s the point of the adverts. Still, I can’t help wondering why he endures all that stress, all that diving into doorways to avoid his next door neighbours, that ducking down below the bar so as not to catch the eyes of his golfing pals, the continual change of routes into work, the bills run up at the Acme joke disguises shops......all that, and for what?

Why doesn’t Dave just tell them? More significantly, as far as I am concerned, why don’t his dumfuck friends clock that it might not be his own creation. There are clues, let’s face it. Firstly, the same fucking meal is on sale in Marks & Spencer! Secondly, and for those who don’t shop in M&S, surely they should be suspicious when Dave dishes out a portion of Italian risotto which would be insufficient to sustain Karen fucking Carpenter for half an hour?

No, I think M&S Italian risotto can go to Grantham – and Dave had better go as well.