Nigel slater is gay
QUEERGURU
NIgel Slater’s Toast ☆☆☆☆
The Other Palace, London
Nigel is a nine year old young man growing up with his adoring mother and rather emotionally cold stepfather in Wolverhampton. Their common love of cooking is the main attraction of every Friday afternoon for Nigel (played convincingly by Giles Cooper) and his mother (Lizzie Muncey bringing warmth and pathos to her role), and we watch them make jam tarts and mince pies. As a family they are gastronomically adventurous (this is the 60’s remember) and spaghetti bolognese is a doubt to eat as well as to their taste buds (“why does parmesan smell of sick?!”).
Toast started existence as a publication by Nigel Slater, then a production and is now presented here as a stage participate by writer Henry Filloux-Bennett. It cleverly employs nostalgia as a trojan horse to soften you up before using very real and traumatic experiences to maximum effect. Tonight, when Nigel brandishes the seminal “Cookery in Colour” by Marguerite Patten, the elderly audience audibly gasped and appreciative murmurs filled the auditorium.
The compete manages to increase to the test of how to present the seduction of smell and taste in the theatre not leas
Nigel Slater is hardly a familiar name in the US. In the UK, however, the chef, food writer and host of the BBC series A Style of My Lifeis the equal of our Wolfgang Puck or Emeril Lagasse. Unlike them, Slater is openly gay. He is also so popular that a movie has been made from his memoirs, Toast, which opens today for a limited engagement at Landmark's Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles. Fans of male lover coming of age stories, British cinema and/or Helena Bonham Carter shouldn't miss it.
Nigel was only nine years old when his beloved mother died and he began to cook for his more distant, widowed father (Mum and Dad are memorably played in Toastby Victoria Hamilton and Ken Stott). Soon after, his father hired a housekeeper, Mrs. Potter (no relation to Harry though amusingly portrayed by Bonham Carter, last seen as Bellatrix LaStrange in the boy wizard's show finale). Mrs. Potter, a seductive vision in blonde wig and red high heels, began fighting with Nigel for the elder Slater's affections. She initially won and found herself the second Mrs. Slater. But once Nigel began to hone his cooking skills in a high educational facility Domestic Science class, the gloves came off and the
Nigel lets both parents know his contempt for this. He wants normal sustenance and a “normal” life, but his mate at college says that “normal’s” over-rated. He expects Nigel to be “interesting” instead.
So he is. As his mother gets sicker and his father struggles to cover that from the boy, the kid rebels. He’s been learning a minute bit about cooking, and he knows the difference between the swill mom cooks and dad devours (sometimes reluctantly) and good meal. Mom has only mastered one dish — the “Toast” of the title.
When Nigel, on his own, whips up a spaghetti dinner and his family rejects it as “foreign” and “strange,” the lad seems to sense the international joke that British cooking had always been.
When mom dies, a new woman enters their lives — Mrs. Potter. She’s given a plump, faintly sinister tap by Helena Bonham Carter. She’s cooking and cleaning for the Slater men, but Nigel senses she’s ready to bail out on her husband and become the recent Mrs. Slater. He judges her and his father harshly, and it doesn’t matter that she’s a fabulous roast . It’s
Nigel Slateris an award-winning British food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazinefor over a decade and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthlysupplement. Prior to this, Slater was food writer for Marie Clairefor five years. He also serves as art director for his books.
Although best known for uncomplicated, comfort-food recipes presented in early best-selling books such as The 30-Minute Cookand Real Fast Food, he became known to a wide audience with the publication of Toast: The Story of A Boy's Hunger, a moving and award-winning autobiography focused on his love of nourishment, his childhood, his family relationships (his mother died of asthma when he was nine), and his burgeoning sexuality. The novel was published in October 2004 and became a best-seller after it was featured on the Richard and Judy Book Club.
In 1998 Slater hosted the Channel 4 series Nigel Slater's Real Food Show. He returned to TV in 2006 hosting the chat/food show A Preference of My Lifefor BBC One.
His latest book, Eating for England: The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table, is devoted