Nigel Slater

I used to like Nigel Slater. Obviously he's a good cook; he's a good writer too and a good speaker. His programmes recemtly on BBC 1 are pleasant to watch though the idea that they are "simple suppers" is plainly ludicrous: simple, my foot! He has more ingredients in his pantry at the ready than I have had hot dinners. Never mind, the programmes are fun to watch. Were!
Then I saw a play on TV this week about Nigel as a boy growing up with a loving mother and a rather boring father with a nasty temper; it was adapted from his autobiography. And now I can't say that I like Nigel Slater at all.
The play was finely done, well acted (especially by the boy who played Nigel) and should have been a lot of fun. The TV critics certainly thought it good - The Times critic gave the play five stars and I suppose I should have done the same thing looking at it objectively. But in my mind it was a one star play or even a no star play. It annoyed me intensely. By the end of the play I found I did not like Nigel Slater one little bit.
Why? Well I think it had to do with the other characters: the father, the cleaning-woman he married after his wife died. They were quite revolting types and I felt that they shouldn't have been. Why not, one may ask, if that was the truth. Because when a character is conceived by a good playwright he or she is brought to life as a whole human being not a collection of features like a cartoon might depict. The father was moody, nasty, unfeeling, coarse; the cleaner-woman was coarse, vile, envious of her step-son's ability to cook as well as she could. Neither had redeeming qualities as most people have unless they are outright villains which they evidently were not.
So the "hero" of the play, Nogel Slater himself, came across as moody, ill-mannered, ungrateful and a loner - not only that but a loner who rather liked being one.
The play ended with Slater, now a young man, leaving home for good just after his father had died (from over-eating it seemed) with his second wife, the cleaning woman (as Slater referred to her throughout) distraught and alone and pleading for comfort in her grief. The fact that he didn't give her any comfort but was too eager to leave left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. I had the impression that the playwright (together with Slater no doubt) enjoyed the "joke" of her despair and expected us to enjoy it too. I didn't. I found myself wondering what happened to her after this not actually wishing to know what happened to Slater. I know what happened to him: he became a famous chef.
A chef for God's sake! Not a Mozart or a Tolstoy or even a Noel Cowerd but a chef.
They say that cookery is the new rock and roll. Perhaps they're right. Just like the old rock and roll it's loud and brash and puerile.