Size matters

LIKE a fine wine, food critic Giles Coren and comedienne Sue Perkins have got better with age. Okay, so it’s actually only been a little more than a year since they first popped up on our screens together, in The Supersizers Go, but their onscreen partnership is developing like a fullflavoured Chardonnay.

With that in mind, we welcome the pair back to the schedules, as they explore six more eras of British food, in The Supersizers Eat.

Considering he is a well-known food critic, it’s surprising Coren didn’t turn his nose up at some of the unusual dishes offered when the cameras were rolling.

However, he does admit he couldn’t bring himself to eat one of the meals dished up in the final episode of the series.

‘‘There were all sorts of horrible things to eat this series, like sow’s udder pate and duck’s tongue, but the only thing I couldn’t eat was mouse, which was served up in the episode on Ancient Rome because, of course, the Romans ate mice,”

he says.

However, the pair ease their way into things in the first programme of the series, which focuses on the Eighties.

A decade renowned for dodgy suits, outrageous quiffs, and Duran Duran (who successfully incorporated both into their act), the Eighties was also a time for experimentation in the kitchen.

The Supersizers sample the delights of nouvelle cuisine and are introduced to the joys of sun-dried tomatoes, ciabatta bread and prawns, courtesy of Michelinstarred chef Marcus Wareing. They also ingest copious amounts of champagne, and coffee from the newly-launched Pret A Manger.

However, it’s not all fun and laughter, as the Eighties decadence soon takes its toll and the pair relive the Black Monday stock market crash and the Miners’ Strike.

They find themselves stretching the food budget as far as it will go, starting with an economical breakfast of instant coffee and pop tarts, before whileing the hours away playing board games.

However, they do loosen the purse strings at the end of the week and host a dinner party for Ken Livingstone, Lynne Franks, Carol Decker and Toby Young, before Giles discovers how the week of overindulgence has affected his heart.

Although he admits he had tremendous fun making both series of Supersizers, and that he loves working with Perkins, he says it’s unlikely that he or his co-host will be involved in another series.

‘‘We already decided that we didn’t really want to,” he says. “Because we’ve done 13 historical periods, I think we’ve probably said in this last show all that needs to be said about the social history of food, and we’ve made all the jokes we could make. We will probably do another series, but it won’t involve food.’’ ON August 22, 2007, news broke that 11-year-old Rhys Jones had been shot dead while walking back from playing football, in Croxteth, Liverpool.

This particular shooting gained the media’s interest when it was alleged that a child was responsible for the attack, and Rhys had become caught in the crossfire between two rival gangs on the one-year anniversary of the murder of a prominent local gang leader.

After several months of police investigation, and numerous public appeals from Rhys’s parents, Melanie and Stephen, 16-year-old Sean Mercer was charged with Rhys’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, after being found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court.

The Real Crime programme features his parents giving their first televised interview since the sentencing of their son’s killer.

They recount the day their footballobsessed son was cruelly taken from them and discuss the police investigation in the months that followed.

The couple are seen paying tribute to their son, as Stephen visits Rhys’s old football haunts, while Detective Superintendent Dave Kelly explains the difficulties involved in building a case.