Fear of Fanny

Fear of Fanny (2006) which is a biography about Fanny Cradock and not vaginaphobia (it's a real phobia apparently) I'm currently on a Julia Davis binge, trying to find and watch all of her many tv performances in which she's starred. In this Davis plays Fanny Cradock the 70's TV chief with a devilish smirk, over her badly painted arched eyebrows .Cradock plagued the TVs in the 7Os with her mushroom vol-au-vent;s and lobster pate and all those other culinary delights which darkened the taste buds of our parents in search of that table top masterpieces for the table spreads. Cradock partner in crime her husband a permanently sozzled Johnny played excellently by Mark Gatiss. The film a BBC production, highlights the facade that Cradock created, it was all an act for the camera's and her fans. She was a bully on screen and in the home, but this hides her loneliness in her that her two sons had both left home, when Cradock hadn't approved of the girlfriends and life choices.

Its a nice nostalgia piece, all the colours principally browns, greens and yellow are all muted and look at times like vomit as does the food to be fair.

The final straw for Cradock is when she belittles a an amateur cook on the BBC TV show Esther Rantzen's Big Time, the audience finally see her for what she is.

Following the sad demise of Johnny we see Fanny, in her dotage arranging the dinner's in her care home much to the chagrin of the kitchen staff.

Its a nice study by Davis, not essential and not that funny perhaps the nature of playing a real person reigned in Davis's dark side, but does make you yearn to see what the real fanny was like.

My recollection of Fanny is from the dim and distanced past and it was the Fanny popularised by Benny Hill, which is seen in the film.

As for Vol-au-vents which I know you were thinking, I tasted these at one of my sisters weddings in the 70s, those condensed cream of mushroom soups opened my taste buds to such delights Vesta's Chow Mein with their crispy noodles, and other various over seas delights. It was around this time that I tried and tasted curried egg, which my brother and sister in law brought the recipe when traveling to the far east. 9/10 for the memories 5/10 for the food and 7/10 for the film.

This was a great show about a deeply insecure woman with intense emotional problems. The show catalogued a lifetime of pretence and despair and the pain she inflicted on others most notably her daughter in law.

I wasn't old enough to see her shows the first time but I remember the infamous blue boiled eggs and the green mashed potatoes as well as other equally hideous food.

Her treatment of the dying Johnny when she couldn't even bring herself to visit him in hospital seemed especially harsh but Fanny suffered from her own demons which seemed to torment her constantly.

I've never had much of a clue what kind of person Fanny Cradock was off screen. On the surface, what bits and pieces I've seen of her TV show always made her seem very quick on her feet, somewhat posh in a calm, intimidating sort of way but most of all perfectly confident. Very little (if any) of that attitude is to be found in this film. Julia Davis comes across uptight instead of posh or intimidating, and constantly nervous and easily upset instead of calm and confident. (That includes the TV show segments so it's not a matter of the movie implying Fanny might have looked formidable on TV but was actually insecure and neurotic off camera.)

I just couldn't recommend this film - when even the obvious stuff is so far off base (whether that's on purpose or because Davis just couldn't pull off a proper Fanny is another matter), I simply can't lend any believability to the more complex parts that are meant to be dealing with the woman's private life and personality while not so subtly passing judgment on both every 20 minutes. 2 out of 10.

i thought that this was an excellent portrait of a deeply complex and individualistic woman. Julia Davis shines as she always does, and seems to inhabit the unknowable Mrs Cradock effortlessly.

Whether you admire Madame Fanny or not, and preposterous and obnoxious as she seems, I rather do, she was a pioneering female, very much of her time, and the world is a more interesting place because she was in it. To paraphrase a line from the programme, better to die miserable than be boring, darling!

My only complaint is that I would have liked to have seen more about her earlier life, how she managed to throw fabulous dinner parties despite World War 2 rationing by catching and cooking whatever unfortunate wildlife strayed into her garden, why she abandoned her children and just what made her tick. Maybe we'll never really know. Maybe we shouldn't.

As a piece of drama this offered absolutely nothing in terms of interest or entertainment. Actors all did a fairly solid job but the script and the narrative where derivative, unexciting and dull. Let's face it, the public perception of Craddock was what made her interesting, the reality was that she was just a ghastly old drag queen who really isn't worth the time this film invests in her.

To add to this because I have to write at least ten lines of waffle, her cooking was pretty gruesome too. It was the stench of the upper middle classes offering advice to the great unwashed that was the Craddock-style (and the BBC at the time) and an hour and a half remembrance of a thoroughly dislikable and untalented Daily Telegraph writer is a total waste of British taxpayers money. ( Paid for by the licence fee which of course is a flat tax on all British households). The BBC should find better things to waste our money on.