"The esoteric appeal is worth the beatings"

"We did try and experience as much as we could - really live it. And sometimes it just felt impossibly lonely. Giles would go, "I'm off to sleep with whores, drink loads of whisky and talk about politics at the club," and I'd be stuck at home in a corset."

"It's quite incredible. As a whole, women have been on a bloke's arm for thousands of years – which I'm not very good at anyway. We've travelled from 100BC to the 1980s and the only job I've had is a part-time one at the travel agents. There's always been a lot of cleaning, but I very nearly went mental this series during the 1950s. Cleaning was all I did. You can make a few jokes about it, then it just becomes boring and claustrophobic."


--Sue Perkins on Supersizers

Skrev om girl-slash-friend-slash-boy-slash-friend TV duos och nu har jag kommit till en annan sådan som verkligen funkar - Sue Perkins och Giles Coren i The Supersizers. Då det inte går att rättvist beskriva hur omsorgsfullt de ratar det gamla vanliga formatet av rolig-manlig-huvudkaraktär-slash-dekorativ-kvinnlig-assistent, och hur det värmer mitt bitterfeministiska hjärta, uppmuntrar jag därför alla att se serien. Youtube är er vän.

Här är mina recaps:

• Supersizers Eat Ancient Rome: One word: Rotten fish guts. Brain and rose petal patina. Roast testicles. This episode has officially the worst food of the whole series. Though, hey: Men in make-up. Bread dipped in wine for breakfast. Hmm. I always have liked the Romans.
  
  
• Supersizers Eat the 50s: The decade of television, tea bags, sliced bread and sugar-coated cereal. And of an 400% increase in sugar consumption. Giles gets to recreate James Bond's Casino Royal and drink champagne at the Ashes. Sue gets to host a cake competition. The average housewife worked a 75-hour week, NOT including the weekend. One word: Sue (to Giles): "Enjoy working, enjoy freedom, enjoy liberation, enjoy not cleaning, enjoy being a man and having fun!"
  
  
• Supersizers Go Elizabethan: One word: No tea or coffee. At all. Giles and Sue spend the episode irritated and dreaming of tea-bags. But since water was too polluted, there's beer for breakfast. And dinner. And supper. And after wet cupping. Elizabethans believed in "head-to-tail" eating so...yuck. Friday was Fish Day. And that means compulsory fish day, people. If you were caught eating meat on a fish day, it meant 3 pounds in fine or 3 days in prison. The Queen, who ate so much sugar her teeth turned black which meant the fashion for women became to blacken their teeth, issued 382 proclamations, more than 200 of them food-releated.
  
  
• Supersizers Go War Time: Everything's rationed except vegetables, so needless to say both Giles and Sue come out more fit than going in. There's no sugar, spam was considered a delicacy, and housewives made meals of powdered eggs, nettles, and National Loaf. Sue even tries some grass and garden snails. Churchill's lunch menu, on the other hand, read: native oysters, petite marmite, venison, ice cream & raspberries, Stilton, fruit and nuts, Pol Roger, chardonnay, claret, port, cognac, cigars. One word: Leaving food on the plate was a crime and people did spend time in jail for it.
  

Och, in the spirit of samla allt i ett inlägg, här är resten:

• Supersizers Eat the 20s. One word: absinthe. Another word: cocktails at The Ritz. Giles can eat what he likes but women had to be thin (shocker!) so stupid laxatives for Sue.
  
  
• Supersizers Go the 70s. Probably my favourite episode because everything is canned and in TV-dinner format and there's so. much. booze. One word: The dinner party recommendation for serving alcohol said half a bottle of gin per two hours PER PERSON - upping it to three quarters (PER PERSON) if the guests were still there after four hours! Also, I'd forgotten about the chocolate cigarettes! So brilliant! Teaching us to associate cigarettes with good, tasty things as early as possible!
  
  
• Supersizers Go the Restoration. Probably my favourite episode because they can't have any water the whole week as back then water was undrinkable. Under Cromwell women were encouraged to acquire an education but when the monarchy was restored that was stopped for fear that women's weaker brains would get damaged from all the learning. Coffee houses took London by storm during the 1660s and became centres for intellectual and political discussions. When the King predictably tried to ban coffee houses the streets of London rioted. One word: withdrawal.
  
  
• Supersizers Eat Medieval. My favourite episode. One word: They just sew a turkey's head onto a pig's body. Then cooked it.
  
  
• Supersizers Eat the French Revolution. The One With The Era When The Aristocracy Actually Ate Themselves To Death. One word: 5000 calories breakfasts. Another word: 40 boiled eggs in a pig's bladder. Everything's very...well, french. Definitely my favourite episode.
  
  
• Supersizers Eat the 80s. One word: Power Lunching. Everyone looks like Patrick Bateman. Not exactly my favourite decade.
  
  
• Supersizers Go Regency. Hmm. I seem to already know a lot about the food and style of this era. Possibly because I've watched Pride & Prejudice approx 12348689 times. What I didn't know however was that Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of London prostitutes. My favourite episode, mostly because Giles looks like Mr Darcy.
  
  
• Supersizers Go Victorian. Gentlemen's clubs, the nouveau riche, brains served on the side as a delicacy and women not allowed to express any overt enjoyment. One word: "That's the face I know from my lovemaking." Fun fact: Queen Victoria, our glorious empress of India, hated all things spicy. My favourite episode, mostly because Giles looks like Sherlock Holmes.