meemalee

My homage. It's like the Yellow Wallpaper all over again. The incredible video below entitled MasterChef Synesthesia (Buttery Biscuit Bass) has been doing the rounds on the internet. I felt like I had to share it here too, since it combines two of my most favourite things - making fun of MasterChef, and a thumping BASS BASS BASS line. The maker Swede Mason have some other gems in their back catalogue - notably a strangely haunting Richard Madeley mashup and a surprisingly appealing Jeremy Clarkson beatbox track ((( Wobble, wobble, wobble))) EDITED TO ADD: You can now buy MasterChef Synesthesia on iTunes - let's get it to Number 1 in the charts! (official release - 7p from each download goes to Comic Relief) www.youtube.com/swedemason www.swedemason.com Buy the amazing OFFICIAL Buttery Biscuit Base T-shirt from Dental Records.

I've never been a fan of spring rolls. I'm fairly sure this is as a result of early exposure at school dinners to a comestible dubbed a pancake roll - a huge, solid, brown rectangle dripping with grease and flabby beansprouts. But summer rolls are an entirely different matter. Fresh, light, stuffed with herbs and lettuce and other stuff so deliciously good for you that it's practically a salad, without the hair-shirt. A traditional Vietnamese snack, summer rolls aka gỏi cuốn need at least one specialist ingredient (the rice paper wrappers), but it's worth schlepping out and stocking up. Classic fillings are thin rice noodles, lettuce, pork and prawns. You can leave out the pork to make it meat-free or substitute fried tofu. I like to use diced roast pork belly (ok, so the claim to health food becomes wobbly here) or sometimes chunks of roast duck. You could use leftovers from a roast. Lettuce-wise, you want to use butter, Boston or Bibb - the round, velvety type - as...

When I was growing up, I loved shopping almost as much as I do now. My dad (affectionately, I hope) called me the "ultimate consumer", and I had various brand prejudices which were probably based on very little evidence. For instance, I thought Sony was the best for tellies, Tefal was the kettle maker, Breville made the perfect sandwich toaster, and Hoover made the best, erm, hoover. Morphy Richards was familiar to me as a good all-rounder - far from super-exciting, but reliable and somehow comforting, the fluffy slippers of the appliance world. So I wasn't that surprised to hear that this year is the 75th Anniversary of Morphy Richards. As part of their celebrations which will include events and giveaways, Morphy Richards picked a group of bloggers (including me) to become Home of the House Proud Innovators , which basically means they would send us their products and ask us to put them through their paces and then share our thoughts. I warned them I'd be brutal...

"I am here (It's Tim)". This text bleeps onto my phone as I emerge from the bowels of St Pancras Station. I text back, "Cool, almost there!" This is a lie - I've come out the wrong entrance and I'm desperately trying to find Eversholt Street to meet Tim Anderson , winner of this year's MasterChef at Asakusa. Finally I arrive, only to see Tim standing in front of the restaurant chatting on his mobile. Except it's not his mobile phone, but one belonging to a gentleman who is perched on his bike and looking at him half excitedly, half in abashment. It dawns on me that said gentleman has asked Tim to talk to his significant other/mother Tom Cruise-style , and I try very, very hard not to wet myself laughing. I smile at Tim and he smiles back, finishes speaking and hands the phone to the guy on the bike, who apologises for the intrusion. I contemplate offering to take a photo of him with Tim, and then decide it would just get too weird ... Anyway. Su...

Before my husband and I spent our days arsing around at food and music festivals, our favourite place to go for larks was a dingy room off the Royal Mile. Specifically the Edinburgh Festival (or rather the Fringe part of it), where we'd deliberately sit in the front row to heckle and be heckled by people like Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, Paul Foot and Dan Antopolski, Daniel Kitson and Simon Munnery, Chris Addison and Greg Davis (aka Fat Rik Mayall aka the teacher from the Inbetweeners). As slightly arrogant comedy purists, we only went for stand-up gigs, the dark stage lit by a microphone and a sardonic grin. Unfortunately, this stupid policy saw us pass up the opportunity to see the first UK shows of both Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh, reluctant to spend a tenner on something as shonky-sounding as "musical comedy". Such hubris meant we ended up spending a great deal more on their recent tours. Though all the venues looked much the same inside, the outs...