Nigella Lawson Definitely has Good Taste

Nigella was on the telly tonight in the U.K.!

Looking fabulous Via

She is starring on a new show called Taste on Channel 4.

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It got off to a debatable start but I will be watching this season not only because of her but also because I find Anthony Bourdain incredibly charming.

Golly gosh, didn't she end the year with a bang?

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I don't know her but can safely say 2013 was her annus horribilus.

Nigella ( click on link for an old but in-depth article )

is one of the few people in the media that is...

I can't seem to find the proper word.

Likeable is too pedestrian.

Endearing is almost patronizing.

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She is a modern emblem of a beauty born with 

brains and privilege that seems to have come straight out of 

Greek tragedy casting.

And because of this perhaps she is one of the few characters that is liked by all classes of society which is no mean feat.

The working class empathize with the fateful unfortunate events that equalize all humans; 

death of mother, sister, and husband at a young age.

The middle classes want to be just like her; looks, brains, seeming lack of effort in everything Nigella does.

And the snobs have no choice but to like her 

because she was born to privilege and power and 
doesn't want to necessarily better herself.

I was a fan of hers before her cooking show and became "Nigella".

I will never forget when I first came across her 
on British telly in the 90's.

She used to be a contributor on a show called Newsnight Review 
on the BBC where several people give their critique 
on everything from the ballet to a movie.

I couldn't quite get over the combination of her looks 

and the superb, articulate expression of her views on a matter.

I have seen her about town but the one encounter

I remember most vividly was more than a decade ago.  

I was next to her at a makeup counter in Harvey Nics. She was with her two children who were then little and acting like one would expect young children to act in a department store. 

She looked lovely but so tired and worried.

Her then husband was still alive.  I also followed her 

then husband Jon Diamond's (2 different links about him) 

weekly column in the Sunday Times 

when he was going through his illness.

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She may not have been "Nigella" as we now know her but the savvy workforce at Harvey Nics knew who she was.

 She pleaded with her children to stay still so she could choose a lipstick.  In the end, the ladies behind the makeup counters helped babysit while Nigella was able to momentarily forget her worries 

by choosing a lipstick color.  

It was a powerful moment that stays with me to this day.

But there was something that disturbed me about the tone of the journalists covering the dissolution of her marriage to Charles Saatchi.  I think most of us did which is why there wasn't the backlash that Saatchi expected and hoped for.

It was the reverse finger pointing that one reserves for the underclass on shows like Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle.

A picture of an article in the Sunday Times I took with my iPad

It was as if the journos thought everyone still naively thought that gilded lives automatically meant a get out of jail pass for life.

I don't know who they were pandering to.

As if we all still believed in fairy tales.

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But Princess Diana was the hangover cure for any 
Disney princess syndrome.

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I don't wish to make Nigella a poster child for martyrdom and
 the poor little rich girl either.

 Charles Saatchi may have engineered the masses to vote for someone whom he apparently didn't even like and elected 

Margaret Thatcher the first female prime minister of the U.K. but 

he couldn't quite sway the hoi polloi to his camp.

A great majority stayed as we postmodernly put it...

#teamnigella