The Reluctant Diner

"Nine! Fucking nine!!! Come off it Kev, a fish course without tarragon is social death!!!"


I have been sitting on the settee for three days now, staring in silence and disbelief at the text. You see, I got a letter on Thursday.

It was in among the usual pile of delivery pizza menus, statements (of the bleedin' obvious) from Lloyds Bank and flyers offering a "once in a lifetime opportunity" which I would, apparently, have to be the victim of a cruel medical experiment to ignore.
The letter was from Granada Television - Factual Programming. Series producer Ms Genevieve (I fucking kid you not) Welch wrote:

"We are making a new, prime-time series of the hit TV show "Come Dine With Me" for Channel 4 and we are looking for people in your area to take part.
"We have specifically sent YOU this letter (that would kinda explain the address on the envelope an' all!) as we believe you could be just the sort of person we are looking for."

I don't know if you've ever caught an episode of this "hit" (the "s" evidently doesn't work on Ms Welch's keyboard!) show but it follows the fascinating exploits of a herd of about half a dozen social rejects who take it in turns to throw a dinner party at their grief hole for their fellow retards. Said diners award points for each host's efforts and the winner at the end of the week is given £1,000, presumably to by a one-way ticket to somewhere far away or to pay for a personality implant.

"All right, Nigel. So we've established that you're not overly keen on asparagus!"


You would have thought that with the wankiest idea for a wanky programme in the history of wanking that they couldn't possibly make it any wankier but inviting Pither to take part is truly ratcheting up the wankometer to an unimaginable degree!

First of all, anybody who ever refers to me as a "sort of person" invariably finds themselves shortly afterwards picking up their teeth with a broken arm! I am NOT "a sort", gottit, Gene-fucking-vieve??
Secondly, and anyway, do you honestly fucking think that a borderline alcoholic, neo-Trotskyite, nihilist, anarchist revolutionary is really "the sort" of person who is a regular on the "dinner party" circuit? The whole "dinner party" concept fills me with revulsion! The word "twee" just doesn't come close enough. Dinner parties are the oily, grinning uncles of that family which counts "Baby On Board" stickers, "family" cars, "his" and "hers" anoraks, fondue sets, badminton and bottled water among its number. Scamming food off mates and finishing off their cooking sherry - yes! Dinner parties - NO!!

Then we come to the basic - I use the word advisedly - elements of this televisual finger-down-the-throat. A bunch of people I would normally mount the pavement to run down descend on Pither Towers to film me cooking dinner. How fucking exciting is that? What next? International Shed-Painting Live from Luxembourg? Laundry Challenge? Pro-Celebrity Shitting? Knocking a Round Off With Chaz and Dave?

I don't know about you but I do happen to love cooking - but the way I do it is not suited to soft-focus, informative programming. The wine is usually cracked open before I've even emptied the Iceland carrier bags. I've been so banjaxed in the past that when it's come time to dish up I have carried the plates through into the cloakroom and been found shouting "Someone put the fucking lights on fer Chrissake!" Also, I really don't think that when Gene-bloody-vieve enquires what gastronomic delight I have come up with she will want to hear the slurred retort "Dunno, fucking label's fallen off the tin!" Likewise, I think she will expect more than everyone noshing Alphabetispaghetti on trays in the lounge while we all sit around watching The Street.

As for going round to the home of a complete stranger for me dinner every night for a week - what am I, in foster care? Besides, I know what I'd end up with each time. Some prettily arranged, pate of ponce's pricks which is to satiation what Bonsai is to the lumber industry.

No, I don't think I'll be giving Genevieve a bell. Dinner parties - and Come Dine With Me - can go to Grantham.