Thursday 13 July 2017

The MasterChef Witches





Heaven alone knows what possessed the BBC to allow Mabel, Doris and Alice – the exceptionally ugly weird sisters who were the residents of Blasted Heath Cottage – to take part in their MasterChef cookery show. Perhaps it was a misguided belief that any reference to the works of William Shakespeare would be good for the ratings, or maybe some magical and other-worldly influences had been brought to bear on the officials who decide these things.

Whatever the reason, the fact remained that the MasterChef kitchen, presided over by the revered John Torode and Gregg Wallace, found itself hosting some unexpected equipment in the shape of three enormous cauldrons as well as the usual cooking facilities. Questions were raised about the health and safety implications of allowing cooking to take place on open fires within the confined space of the MasterChef studio, but – once again – the people with the power to decide such matters seemed to become strangely willing to put aside any objections, and they were also persuaded to change the theme music for the series to “I put a spell on you”, which was appropriate if nothing else.

As the rounds progressed, the other entrants fell by the wayside one after the other. It might possibly have been that their dishes were considered too unoriginal by the judges when set against what Mabel, Doris and Alice had to offer. After all, none of them could compete with the delights of bat wing surprise or dog tongue upside down cake. Alice’s newt and lizard turnovers were declared the star dish of the third show, and nothing could compare with Mabel’s adder’s fork ice cream in the semi-final.

At least, everyone said that these entries were the best things they had ever tasted, and that included all the guest gourmets who came on to the show at various stages. Was any undue influence brought to bear on their judgments in the form of strange incantations uttered over the cauldrons just before the tastings took place? Who could possibly tell? 

The final was therefore fought out between the three witches, who now found themselves in competition with each other as opposed to cooperating to get rid of the other entrants. Sisterly love soon gave way to sibling rivalry and no tactics were considered too underhand to be attempted.

Of the three final dishes, Mabel’s was clearly not going to win. The added ingredients supplied by Doris and Alice, when Mabel’s back was turned, had a devastating effect on the BBC presenters when they passed by and sniffed at the cauldron – all John Torode’s hair fell out and Gregg Wallace suddenly found himself sporting a luxuriant set of dreadlocks that reached down to his waist. The make-up department had a terrible time getting the pair back to their usual appearance, and Mabel was promptly dismissed from the show.

Doris had prepared a new approach to brunch, which was to combine breakfast and lunch on the same plate, in the shape of fairly traditional muesli laced with strips of raw yak meat. Doris being Doris, the muesli had a few added ingredients in the shape of dragonfly wings and chopped hedgehog spines, but it was definitely the pieces of yak that made Doris’s dish stand out as the main contender for the top prize. As usual, John Torode questioned whether it was sufficiently seasoned, but that appeared to be the only objection.

Alice was incensed. After all the effort she had made to get the right rats for her take on ratatouille, she had no intention of seeing her sister steal what she saw as her rightful crown. Doris knew all about doctoring a rival’s entry, so there was no way she was going to allow Alice to get close to hers. Alice had no choice but to win by bribing the judges. 

And that was what she did. As mentioned above, Alice had come to the show with a consignment of rats, and not all of them had been used in her dish. Indeed, she discovered just before the broadcast that some of them had given birth to litters of baby rats and she therefore had considerably more than she started out with. Her rats were direct descendants of those that that caused such devastation by spreading the Black Death in the 14th century, as were the fleas they carried that were the real culprits.

Alice had the very weapon she needed. If she was not given first prize by the judges, she only had to release her highly fertile vermin for Black Death Number Two to be let loose on to the streets of London. She therefore had a quiet word with John and Gregg, urging them to favour her ratatouille over Doris’s unusual brunch.  The words she actually used had seemingly been provided for that very purpose by William Shakespeare when he wrote Twelfth Night:

“If muesli beef’s the food you love, plague on!”


© John Welford

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