Paterson especially had a very colorful history, as is brought out in a loving retrospective extra documentary that is the main bonus feature on the 4 DVD set. Raised in the early part of her life in China, where she insisted drinking water from the Yangtze River made her immune to all food-borne illnesses for the rest of her life, she then followed her engineer father around to various other European locales until her robust temperament landed her in a convent-led religious school. Jennifer's refusal to "play by the rules" quickly led to her expulsion, and she never really seemed to regain her footing, at least in terms of what society expects of an upper-crust English woman coming from considerable means. She spent the next several decades wandering from short-lived job to short-lived job (including nanny and, appropriately, cook), most of which ended with her throwing tantrums and walking out (there's a not-quite-stated subtext that there may have been some form of mental illness, or at least neurosis, contributing to this). She finally ended up as cook for the UK magazine The Spectator (yes, they had their own kitchen, where they cooked meals for weekly meetings with such notables as Members of Parliament and such). That job was peppered (sorry, couldn't resist) with frequent "sackings," as the British put it, of Jennifer for various reasons, none of which seemed to convince her not to return to her post the next day. In one of the funnier asides in the biographical documentary, an editor of The Spectator states that one's energy for sacking someone diminishes after two or three times when they keep coming back. Jennifer's temper finally got the better of her when she threw all of the magazine's dirty crockery out of a third-floor window, leading to her ultimate dismissal, only to be rehired two weeks later as an actual food writer.

Dickson, by comparison, comes off as relatively tame, and indeed tends to take a backseat (or perhaps a sideseat, as she is the passenger in the sidecar) to most of these proceedings. The daughter of a well-known surgeon, Dickson was thoroughly schooled before launching into a law career, allegedly the youngest woman ever to be called to the English Bar. She also evidently started drinking heavily, leading to some problems throughout her adult life and her ultimate joining of Alcoholics Anonymous. She, like Paterson, managed to eke out a living by working as a cook, and after she sobered up, took over a popular bookstore catering to cooks.

And so these two rather boisterous elderly women were introduced by the BBC relatively late in their lives, and were asked to do an unusual combination of travelogue and cooking show, which turned out to be phenomenally successful not only in Britain, but all over the world. There is nothing even slightly politically correct about Two Fat Ladies, either in terms of the repartee between the titular women, or indeed even the fat-laden, meat-heavy foods they cook. It's not unusual for Paterson to swig more than a bit of alcohol during any given show, often bursting into a variety of showtunes as she mixes various foodstuffs with her bare hands ("They're spotlessly clean," she'll repeatedly insist). Dickson tends to be the supporting player here, sometime egging (sorry again) Paterson on and getting her to wax nostalgic about her storied past. Several episodes conclude with Paterson pulling out her cigarettes (she died of lung cancer in 1999 during the series' aborted fourth season) and taking a langorous puff, almost as if she's in cooking afterglow.

The food itself may leave those with a less cultured palette scratching their heads, if not their tongues. Paterson tends to think anchovies go well with everything, and, aside from the occasional episode dealing specifically with vegetables or fruit, there's not a vegetarian meal to be seen here. In fact Paterson likes to go out of her way to insult vegetarians for their supposed meat-free idiocies. One can only shudder to think what she thought of vegans. Most of the meals are, therefore, built around various meatstuffs or fish, and come dripping in lard (in one episode Paterson pours literally pounds of lard into her recipe, insisting it will all "burn off"). There's another episode where the two are seen slathering butter on a piece of toast which a producer in the extra documentary likens to pornography.

I happen to be one of Paterson's dreaded vegetarians, and so cannot vouch for the various recipes, though my wife, something of a gourmet cook herself, watched these with me and said the recipes all sounded great, including some unusual uses of various herbs and spices to garnish the basic dishes. Paterson and Wright both insist on fresh ingredients, and many of the episodes show them rounding these up from roadside markets or farmers, as they adamantly refuse to "go shopping" at a supermarket for any foodstuffs. The traveling segments are also very nice here, with beautiful vistas of the English countryside, usually spiced (what did you expect at this point?) with brief history lessons mentioned in passing.

Two Fat Ladies is a very unique recipe unto itself, and cooking aficionados are sure to get a kick out of it for a variety of reasons.

The DVD

Video:
All of the full frame episodes look very sharp, with excellent clarity and top-notch color and saturation. I did notice very occasional aliasing on a couple of episodes.

Sound:
Nothing very remarkable about the standard stereo soundtrack, but, then again, it's invariably simply Paterson and Wright speaking, with occasional guests coming on as well. You do get a hint of good separation and low end fidelity when their motorcycle zooms by during linking segments. English subtitles are available.

Extras:
A nice little recipe booklet with "yum-mo" foods is included, as well as text biographies of the women on one of the DVDs. The best extra, as mentioned above, is an approximately 45 minute retrospective documentary on Paterson, who led a very "colorful" (as they say) life.

Final Thoughts:
Even if you couldn't care less about the foods they're cooking, Paterson and Wright make such a distinctive, rowdy pair that they're a joy to watch anyway. If you're a cook, there's simply that much more to get out of these episodes. Two Fat Ladies comes recommended.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet