Eulogy

By Clarissa Dickson Wright

Obviously I shall miss JENNIFER PATERSON [left] and her fun, but one of the things I shall miss most is the fact that there is nobody now who realizes quite how bizarre the last four years have been. I think our producers thought two opinionated women in the same kitchen would bicker, and of course we didn't. From the minute we started cooking together we got on really well. And our experiences as the show became successful were so strange. In America we were greeted, much to my surprise, with great glee. At one point we were the fourth best-selling book in Los Angeles. They can only have read it for pornography, we thought--they live off lettuce leaves! When we were at a lunch in Australia, there were these 800 people waving their table napkins around and cheering. I remember we looked at each other and Jennifer said, "My dear, I feel like a cross between the Queen Mother and the Beatles." When I last spoke to her she made a great point of saying if anything happened to her, I must tell people her liver and her arteries were in perfect condition. She said, "It's only the smoking that's done this." She told me once that when she was a little girl she wanted to be the lady in the pink tutu going round on the circus horse with all the spotlights on her. Well, for the last four years, she's had her circus horse.

--CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT, chef and co-star of Two Fat Ladies