A Wigging from Jezza

The terrible rain should have been catastrophic for ice cream sellers at the Hay Festival, but there were relieving reports that business didn't suffer from the utilitarian British tendency to match food groups to weather patterns: stews in winter, salads in summer, and all that lower-class malarkey. Only one bad report about local produce threatens to sour the experiences of most happy customers. "Top writer", Jeremy Clarkson, thought that the sheep's milk ice cream had a nutritional value equivalent to licking Arthur Scargill's hair. If Jeremy isn't too bothered about the distasteful parallels he's feeding his readers for breakfast, and if he insists on pinching critical foodie work from his chum, A.A. Gill, then here are a few ideas to keep him going in a new column: I'm told that Ray Buckton's toenail clippings were reminiscent of the bits of burnt lasagne that stick to the sides of unwashed earthenware, Bill Morris's old silver fillings were evocative of the flyaway bits of scrag-end shrapnel in anybody's grandmother's mutton casserole, and the ear wax that used to collect on the rubber-end of Rodney Bickerstaffe's pencils was as heavenly as honey drizzled over the thighs of a Botticelli angel. Not forgetting, of course, the caviar of collective human effort, those big green bogies found in the snout of any reasonably mature, provincial union official. These last sweetmeats are still absolutely delightful, and are the true origin of the phrase, 'a good nose'.