Nigel Slater is popular because he’s an exceptionally meek cook. Not for him the sprawling restaurant empire or the transatlantic TV career to excite envy and loathing. He writes about his trade in simple vivid prose and his bestselling memoir, Toast, has become a play.
Young Nigel enters as a 1960s schoolboy, with shorts and a side parting, living in a posh suburb of Wolverhampton. Dad is a kindly but remote presence, an alien in his own home. Mum is a braindead kitchen-limpet who encourages Nigel’s first culinary experiments. The family are adventurous. They try spaghetti bolognese. Dad takes charge at the dinner table and loads each plate with a heap of yellow string topped by garnish the colour of lava spewed from a volcano. Nigel pronounces the dish quite good. Not hugely exciting but reasonable.
Much of the play is pitched at this undemanding level. Nigel tells us he likes smells and he also likes lists. Then he gives us a list of smells that he likes. Food junkies will be disappointed that the focus is on sweets rather than on cuisine, and the script includes a roll call of the oddly named confectionary available in the 1960s: Refreshers, Acid Drops, Flying Saucers, Black Jacks, Traffic Lights, Humbugs and Matchmakers. To modern ears these sound like Class-A drugs or dark-web cures for erectile dysfunction but half a century ago they were children’s primary source of sensory pleasure. During the first act, bags of chews and mints were passed along the rows and we were encouraged to rummage for a treat and wolf it down. In the interval we each received a Walnut Whip and a strict warning not to eat it until ordered to do so.
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