Ian MacMillan: Unsteady as a cook with a prize pinny

ONE of the ways I take after my dad is that when I’m washing up I like to wear a pinny. My dad wasn’t bothered what people thought and he’d happily wear one of my mam’s flowery ones so from the front he looked like a pantomime dame about to rush onstage, but I prefer a more masculine number. One with a touch of black, perhaps, or some stripes, or an ironic comedy design that says, “Hey, I’m washing up because I’m wacky and kooky but really I’m a man’s man tha knows”.
By The Newsroom
Published 25th Apr 2011, 01:00 BST

Of course there’s no point washing up without a pinny because you just get your trousers soaked, so you may as well just grit your teeth and get your pinny on, unless you favour chest waders. I have to admit that over my years at the sud face of washing up I’ve had a couple of favourite pinnys. There was the dark one with a nice deep pocket that I could keep stuff in, like my mobile phone. That was all very good until one day the biggest spider I’ve ever seen crawled out of the aforementioned nice deep pocket and scuttled towards my neck. It was as big as a crab or the head of a mop. I flapped my arms around and went ‘gerrof gerrof gerrof’ like I was a character in a cartoon and the vast spider fell lazily to the floor and sauntered out of the open kitchen door into the spring sunshine. I never wore that particular pinny again.

My best ever pinny, though, was my Ready Steady Cook one. I once went on a National Poetry Day edition of the show and to my surprise I won despite the fact I managed to set fire to some kitchen roll. Maybe they just thought I was a harmless Yorkshire fool, a persona that’s stood me in good stead over the years. I won £100 in cash which I kept gazing at in the taxi to the station as though it was £1m. But the other exciting thing about winning was that they let you keep your pinny, in my case one with a red pepper emblazoned on it because that was my team. I had it in my briefcase, like contraband.

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Now, I don’t drink. And even when I drank I didn’t really drink, if you get my drift. A couple of pints and I’m snoring or weeping or both. That day, though, the adrenalin was rushing because I’d just been on telly and I’d won. I got on the train at King’s Cross, strode up to the bar and proceeded to convert as much of the prize as I could into beer for me and all my newly-acquired friends at that end of the carriage. I smiled at them and said, my voice slurring with ale, “I’ve been on Ready Steady Cook you know!” “Prove it!” said a harsh man in an even harsher suit. I reached into my briefcase and put the pinny on and at the same time bought more beer.

After Grantham I began to feel unsteady and I had to sit down, still with the lovely red pinny on. I lolled in a seat and fell into an instant and beery slumber. I’m ashamed to say that I dribbled. Suddenly a voice on the Tannoy shouted “Doncaster!” and I got up and ran off the train. Somebody came up to me as I stood unsteadily in the sunshine.

“You’ve been on Ready Steady Cook!” they said. I wonder how they knew?

Related topics:YorkshireGranthamKing's Cross