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Gwyneth Paltrow IS Clarissa Dickson Wright... Are you listening, Hollywood?
She may have pleaded guilty to illegal hare coursing, but Clarissa Dickson Wright is unrepentant. She talks to Sarah Freeman.
Clarissa Dickson Wright recently took an unexpected call. It was from Hollywood.
A studio is apparently interested in adapting her biography Spilling the Beans for the big screen and they wanted to talk about film rights. Like most of the odd requests she receives – and there are many – she was simply flattered to be asked.
"Can you imagine? I just thought how wonderful," she says. "Obviously I've thought about who would play me and it would definitely have to be Meryl Streep and maybe Gwyneth Paltrow could play me in my younger days."
The idea of a LA makeover has amused her ever since and she admits nothing in her life surprises her. It's easy to see why. Destined to become a barrister, her career in the law was ruined by alcoholism. Having spent the money from a not insubstantial inheritance – the equivalent, she says, of 15m in today's money, she ended up working in a cookery book shop, before unexpectedly finding fame as one of the Two Fat Ladies.
While being driven round the countryside in a motorbike side car, by on-screen partner Jennifer Paterson, she quickly became an icon for Britain eccentricity and plain speaking. Her blunt, no- nonsense style was not only a ratings winner, but it catapulted her into a world of celebrity while still wearing her waterproof anorak and walking boots.
She has since appeared in Absolutely Fabulous, harangued a number of Government ministers and become an unofficial spokesman for rural affairs. Even her doctor is the brother of sculptor Anthony Gormley.
Most recently, Clarissa was in the news at the centre of an illegal hare coursing court case, accused of attending two events in North Yorkshire on land owned by leading racehorse trainer Peter Easterby and huntsman Major John Shaw.
While vocal about her determination to fight the allegations, when Easterby and Shaw were convicted at an earlier trial, she and her co-accused, racehorse trainer Sir Mark Prescott, had no option but to change their pleas to guilty.
Neither attended the hearing at Scarborough and both were given an absolute discharge by the judge who admitted that at the time of the offences in 2007 the interpretation of the controversial Hunting Act was still unclear. Animal rights campaigners from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who had brought the private prosecution, insisted the ruling was a vindication of their two-year battle. Clarissa prefers to describe the whole proceedings as a farce.
"I would have loved to have had my day in court, but unfortunately it wasn't to be," she says. "We got caught on a technicality and we had no option to plead guilty. We honestly didn't believe we were doing anything wrong and the whole thing was a total shambles. The police were never interested in speaking to us and the prosecution seemed to me to be an exercise in vigilantism. The Hunting Bill was an appallingly badly-drafted piece of legislation and it remains so today."
Clarissa's views of the animal rights lobby are well-documented and in her new book Rifling Through My Drawers, which follows a year in her still very busy life, she finds more opportunity to vent her frustration. From the demise of the Waterloo Cup – the hare coursing equivalent of the Grand National – to police reluctance to tackle protesters for fear of reprisal, she has nothing good to say about the people she calls "the antis".
They're the kind of statements guaranteed to stoke fires among those who already believe she is a dinosaur, not that she cares much. "Some of them are truly dreadful people," she says in a voice which had she continued as a barrister would have brought witnesses instantly to their knees. "There was one occasion when I was doing a book signing in Norwich. There was quite a queue, but the antis decided to make an appearance and sprayed people with red paint. However, we tend to have a pretty good sense of humour and we all decided the books covered in paint would be a kind of limited edition."
Rifling Through My Drawers is part diary, part rant. Leaving workmen to rid her Edinburgh home of rising damp she travels the length and breadth of the country, dropping into Women's Institute events, food fairs and agricultural shows and never failing to be amazed at the bureaucracy and plain idiocy which she believes has replaced good old-fashioned common sense.
"Don't get me started on the whole catastrophe which is food labelling," she says. It's too late. "We have developed an obsession for the cheapest possible produce and that means importing vast amounts of food from abroad. However, no-one seems to be overseeing what these animals are fed on or how they are looked after. Section 36 of the Trade Descriptions Act, which says a product may be named as coming from the place it last underwent any process, is one of my great bugbears. It means you get Chilean salmon, smoked in Italy, sliced and packaged in Scotland being sold as Scottish smoked salmon.
"The simple removal of this one piece of legislation would stop all that. I'm hopeful that if or when the Conservatives come to power they will do something about it. I have had a few long talks with Jim Paice (the Conservative spokesman for agricultural and rural affairs], a delightful man who speaks a lot of sense." Despite finding some solace with the Tories, Clarissa has no strong affiliation with any political party. She simply speaks as she finds and she has heard nothing from the Labour Party to convince her they share her vision for the future of food, farming and the countryside.
"Tony Blair was a man who adopted the bread and circuses philosophy," she says. "Like with so much of politics it all turned out to be smoke and mirrors. It was very interesting during the foot and mouth epidemic that the only advisers the Government was interested in talking to were those from Maff, now rebranded as Defra, and the supermarkets. There
was not one single representative from the butchery concerns
"It's the same with so many things. The people without any knowledge or expertise make decisions which affect those who do and if we allow the health and safety lot to take over then I fear we are all doomed.
"Last year I was at the Bath and West Show. The heavens opened and the showground was flooded. However, despite the ground being so incredibly wet, one of the health and safety lot went up to the stall of a man who was selling wellington boots. He had put down some straw to try to soak up a rather large puddle, but was told it was a hazard and might catch fire. Not surprisingly he lost his temper, whipped out a box of matches and said, 'A thousand pounds to anyone who manages to set fire to that straw'. Needless to say, they slinked away rather shamefacedly."
Clarissa often seems to be in search of a Britain which now only exists in the smallest of corners, a time when everyone made their own jam and no-one worried about their carbohydrate intake. However, while she may be very much old school, her unconsciously back-to-basics approach to life – she has no central heating and bought a television only last year – has become rather fashionable.
However, should Friends of the Earth ever think about asking her to become a face for their campaigns, they should probably be aware that she is also currently stockpiling old-fashioned lightbulbs in protest against the decision to phase them out.
"I am very ambivalent about the whole question of global warming and greenhouse gases," she says. "To my mind, it seems that in this country at least they are rods with which to beat us. The life I lead is by accident quite ecological. If I'm cold I put on a woollen jumper, in fact one of the things that annoys me most is these artificial fleeces that people wear."
Clarissa's opinions on man-made fibres could probably fill another book, as could her philosophy of life. A practising Catholic, her faith, she says, means she is unafraid of dying and besides, she also believes in reincarnation. "When I was at school I read a book by AW Mason which was all about reincarnation," she says. "To me it makes sense. If there is some point to life then we are never going to be able to answer all the questions it poses in 80 years or however long we are given. It would also explain why every time I find myself in an 18th-century kitchen, I automatically roll up my sleeves and look for the nearest mixing bowl."
However, before she returns in some other guise, Clarissa has much to do, including contemplating a move to Yorkshire. "I have such a lovely time whenever I visit I have thought about moving there permanently," she says. "After all, it's where my family roots are. My ancestors can be traced back to York. They were part of the Gunpowder Plot and ended up hanged, drawn and quartered with Guy Fawkes."
Clarissa may not yet have stormed parliament, but should David Cameron become Prime Minister and fail to abolish Section 36, he would be well advised to batten down the hatches.
Rifling Through My Drawers, by Clarissa Dickson Wright, published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced 19.99 is available to buy through the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 0153232 or online. Postage and packing is 2.75.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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