“FRUITCAKE!” is Rosemary Shrager’s answer to what would be the perfect food to eat while reading her debut crime novel. “And a nice cup of tea.”
Well, there’s nothing Miss Marple couldn’t solve over a nice cup of tea. “It’s funny you say that!” says Rosemary. “I didn’t base it on her, but I almost wanted it to have that feeling of Miss Marple.”
In The Last Supper - which the TV chef is showcasing at Ilkley Literature Festival - an old TV rival, Deidre Shaw, is found dead at a Cotswolds manor house, where she was catering for a shooting weekend. Digging into the past of the manor, and an unsolved murder, Prudence discovers that Deidre’s death was no accident...
“Prudence is me. Well, she is and she isn’t. I’m slightly old fashioned in the book, but I’m not, if you see what I mean,” says Rosemary.
She has a kinetic energy. “Bonkers” is how she describes herself. But Rosemary had a challenging background. Her relationship with her mother was strained. She married relatively young and had two children, but financial disaster hit when her husband’s business failed in the nineties. She had to borrow money from a friend to get a train ticket to London to find work.
Her breakthrough came after being hired to manage the catering at a Scottish shooting estate, where she began making appearances on the BBC Food and Drink programme. She was snaffled up by Channel 5, and has been on TV ever since.
“I love TV. Live is better than pre-record. I quite like it if things go wrong, because it’s real television,” she says. “I like it when things are funny, and not perfect. At the end of the day, you’ll always turn out something.”
Of ITV’s Cooking with the Stars, she says she adores celeb contestants Anton Du Becke and Johnny Vegas. “They’re just funny. The problem is, they can’t cook, but they think they can,” she laughs.
Rosemary braved I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Is there any show she wouldn’t do? “Big Brother. They’d have to pay me an awful lot of money to say yes. Even when I did, I’m a Celebrity, I made sure that I was just me. There was no game plan.”
When she’s not on telly, she’s hosting a cookery masterclass on Facebook or appearing at a literary event. She puts her work ethic down to strong women in her family, and the “cocktail of blood” in her family tree.
Before starting a cookery school in Tunbridge Wells in 2013, Rosemary was based in North Yorkshire, near Masham, where she worked at Swinton Park Hotel’s cookery school. She was also patron of the Veterans Artisan Bakery, a therapeutic bakery at Catterick Garrison for veterans at risk of homelessness. “That charity was important to me,” she says. “I support Age UK, I get behind people with spinal injuries. These things are not sexy, but really important.”
She’s well aware that many celebrities are writing ‘cosy crime’ - Richard Osman, Rev Richard Coles, Graham Norton. “I think everybody did it in lockdown as far as I can see. I don’t think anything else could have brought it on,” she says.
Her book, she says, is an “easy read”. “I admire Ann Cleeves, but for me it’s too dark. All that killing people. I find it scary. I thought, ‘Do I really want to be scared?’ No, not at the moment, I’m scared enough about real life.”
She’s working on book three, and hopes to do at least six in the series: “The next one is set in North Yorkshire, it’s all about fracking. I worked at Swinton and everyone was up in arms about fracking, so I thought, put it in a book!”
Rosemary Shrager is at All Saints Church, Ilkley, on Saturday, October 15 at 3.30pm. Visit ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk
* OVER at the Victoria Theatre in Halifax, there’s a new stage production of Helen Forrester’s Twopence To Cross The Mersey (October 13 and 14). Based on the late author’s million-selling autobiography, the play chronicles her early life in 1930s Liverpool. When Helen’s father is declared bankrupt the family of nine leaves behind their servants and beautiful West country home for Liverpool, where they’re forced to rely on parish hand-outs and the kindness of strangers. The burden of keeping house falls on 12-year-old Helen’s young shoulders.
Says Rob Fennah, who adapted the much-loved book: “Helen was hands-on. Along with hours of phone conversations with her, from her home in Canada, I have a stack of letters crammed with gems that never found their way into her books. Helen would travel to the UK and we’d get together to talk about the stage adaptation. I feel privileged to be entrusted with her most famous work.”
“Last time we met we were standing outside the Hoylake house of her grandmother, who’d fallen out with Helen’s father over money. Living in a Liverpool slum, Helen longed to visit her grandmother, convinced that if she could explain how bad things were, she’d come to their rescue. But from the other side of the Mersey she needed tuppence for the ferry.” Visit victoriatheatre.co.uk or call (01422) 351158.
* HEAD to downtown Brooklyn this autumn, when Saturday Night Fever returns to Bradford’s Alhambra (November 8-12). Paying homage to the 1977 John Travolta movie, the musical is packed with disco classics, including Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever and Tragedy. It is of course the story of Tony Manero, a paint store clerk who dances the nights away at the local disco. When he starts to fall for beautiful, talented Stephanie as they train for a big dance contest, there are tragic repercussions among Tony’s gang of friends.
* BRADFORD’S Trapezium Gallery is showcasing a group of local artists who met online in lockdown to support and inspire each other. Collective Perspective is the work of Sand Rennie, Angel Kershaw, Meg Hughes, Suzanne Jackson and Gerard Bell-Fife from the Armchair Artists’ Collective, created from a Facebook group set up by Sand to share artwork.
The collective has undertaken several projects, including short film The Laughing Salmon of Bradford, which can be seen in this exhibition, and decorating bollards to brighten Shipley’s urban landscape for this year’s Creative Highstreets Campaign. “We encourage each other to take risks, but also support each other with constructive feedback and technical advice,” says Sand.
Collective Perspective,Trapezium Gallery, Kirkgate, Bradford, October 15 to November 5. Meet the artists at the launch on Saturday, October 15, 12-2pm. Visit trapeziumarts.com
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