Jeremy Clarkson: A screen queen ate my pork pie
I suppose we all dream about the day when George Clooney calls to say he?s in
the area and would like to drop by for lunch. We fantasise about the Dover
sole we?d make for starters, and the sparkling conversation we?d serve up with
the coffee and mints. And we know it?s never going to happen.

Well, last week it sort of did. I was at a seaside holiday cottage when
someone I?d invited for lunch rang to ask if they could bring a friend.

Who turned out to be my favourite actress in the world. I dislike the word
?gobsmacked? but that?s what I was. Utterly and absolutely bowled into a
stuttering, quivering stupor.

And then the practicalities set in. She would be bringing her three children,
which meant there?d be 22 for lunch and the Aga was broken. To make matters
worse, it was a Sunday morning, which meant all the supplies would have to be
bought at the local ShopRite.

And then there are my culinary skills to consider. Given time, and only three
small children to satisfy, I can make a fairly decent fist of a Sunday roast.
Providing no one wants gravy.

But we were talking here about catering for 22, including a Hollywood
superstar, in a small back-up oven, and the only ingredients I could find
initially were six bananas. And some ginger.

Is there anything so depressing as a small village shop on a Sunday morning,
after the local dope heads have been through the place with an attack of the
munchies and there?s hardly anything left? Well, yes there is, as it turns
out. Being confronted with all those empty shelves when your heroine is due
for lunch in two hours. It was a good time to panic.

Happily, I?d been joined by the producer of Top Gear who knows how to reduce a
jus. But even he was stumped by what on earth could be achieved with nothing
but bananas and ginger.

?What about roast banana with ginger sprinkled on the top?? I suggested
imaginatively. ?What about shutting up,? he replied, and set off for the meat
counter, where we hoped to find something she?d like: a swan, perhaps, or
maybe a bit of peacock.

We were to be disappointed. All they had was a jumbo family pack of steak and
kidney pie, and a quiche, which, according to a bright green starburst on the
packaging came ?with 26% less fat?.

Neither seemed appropriate. But there was a Pork Farms pork pie, and some
sausages.

So, a grated pork pie on a reduction of sausage, garnished with a banana and
ginger jus. Mmmm. And we also managed to find a jar of mustard, some Branston
pickle, a tub of coleslaw, which was perilously close to its ?best before?
date and some limes. We had the bones of a lunch here, we felt. If we had been
in a Sudanese refugee camp. Rather than catering for a screen diva, a goddess,
a globally recognised, Oscar-nominated, drop dead gorgeous superstar.

Don?t you think this is odd? If it had been you turning up for lunch, I?d have
invited you to eat whatever you could prise from the cracks in the kitchen
table. I certainly wouldn?t have spent the morning painting a mustard sauce
onto the Wall?s sausages.

And nor would I have filled the fridge with the staple diet of all actresses;
gently carbonated mineral water, into which I?d squeezed a bouquet of my
ShopRite limes. You?d have had whatever was in the tap.