Getting saucy with new Nigella show

A scheduling quirk means you can watch Nigella Lawson cook up lots of fattening dishes and then switch channels to see someone throwing up after an eating binge in Fat Friends.

Janet Dibley was the actress with her head down the lavatory pan after stuffing eclairs, cakes and chocolates as the bulimic leader of a slimming class in the sequel to Kay Mellor's hit. Once again it's an often-raucous mix of tears and laughter that's worked so well for the Leeds-based writer in the past.

Goddess of the kitchen Nigella Lawson wants to remind us of those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer in her new series featuring recipes the colour of sunshine and the colour of happiness.

Particularly interesting is a drink called lemon drop, containing lemon liqueur, triple sec, lemon, sugar and ice. "Sherbert lemon in liquid form," is Nigella's description.

Happiness Soup - yellow courgettes, turmeric, lemon zest and juice, stock, batsami rice - has an "intense lemonyness" (is she making up these words?). Just stirring it makes Nigella feel she must be getting a tan. Her enthusiasm knows no bounds. It's sunshine in a bowl, not to mention "mood enhancement of an entirely legal kind".

A different kind of mood is needed to make crispy lamb chops as Nigella beats them to death with a rolling pin. "There's always room for brutality in the kitchen," she insists.

Dare I suggest that some won't be watching for cooking hints but to see her wrap her luscious lips around a piece of pineapple dunked in chocolate sauce envigorated with a splash of coconut rum, and hear her coo "Mmmmmm" as she bites into a chop.

When athlete Steve Cram recalls in When We Were Kids that, as a youngster, he looked like a banana in his football kit of yellow shirt, shorts and socks, he sounds like something Nigella would use in her colours of summer recipes.

This series, about growing up in the North-East in the early 1970s is an unbeatable combination of archive footage and famous folks' recollections of being a child at that time.

Sweet-toothed Nigella would have been best friends with Denise and Debbie Welch, whose family owned a toffee factory. The sisters, Denise reveals, were on the A-list of parties because they always took a jar of toffees with them. Mmmmmm, as Nigella would say.