Why I'm a leading contender for the Great British fruitcake bake off
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Version 0 of 1. As homemade fruitcakes continue to rise in the nation's ovens, the political and culinary establishments are sinking to even greater depths to smear them. In some Birmingham schools, traditional Christmas cake, the famous fruitcake of English festive celebration since Dickens's day, has even been banned. But moist fruitcakes composed of dried fruit, flour, margarine, eggs and spirits have made delicious British teatime treats for centuries. What better combination of tastes is there than a pint of foaming ale, a Totally Wicked e-cigarette, and a slice of flavoursome fruitcake? But could a fruitcake represent British interests in the European parliament? Many believe so. I have always delighted, quite innocently and without malice towards anyone, in fruitcakes. Fruitcakes are literally in my DNA. Anyone that knows me will tell you I am rarely to be found without a slice of fruitcake or, indeed, an entire fruitcake, concealed somewhere about my person, or upon that of my wife, who should be following respectfully behind me. Indeed, during a midlife crisis mania for baking a few years ago, my gooseberry drizzle was so enthusiastically gobbled up by a Greek tycoon at a fundraising cake stall that I was forced to subject him to the indignity of a swift Heimlich manoeuvre. Having been slapped heartily on the back Demetri spat out not only the fruitcake, but also ten thousand pounds in cash, which I swiftly pocketed, along with the fruitcake fragments and a copy of his fascinating book, Women in Trousers – A Rear View. I bloody love fruitcakes though. Sometimes my fruitcakes mania reaches such a peak that, having sourced the fruitcake ingredients, I haven't even the self-control to wait to bake them, and on more than one occasion my wife has found me hiding in the en suite, swilling a mixture of dried fruit, flour, margarine, bicarbonate of soda, and some egg, around in my mouth with brandy, mainlining fruitcake mix into myself like a bloody madman. I like British fruitcakes most of all, made from indigenous British fruits, like a red apple for example, and have no time for foreign fruitcakes; the Italian torta frutta; the French gateau aux fruits; and the Jamaican ackee pancake. I think if Jamaican fruitcakes come to this country and don't like mixing with our fruitcakes, why are they here? I just like to eat fruitcakes made from fruits I am familiar with and comfortable around. I shouldn't be forced to eat fruitcakes made from foreign fruits from Bongo Bongo Land, and indeed I never am. No one is. (I am partial to the Irish Halloween fruitcake, barmbrack, but find I can never stomach much more than the top righthand corner before it starts to make me feel queasy.) On balance though, despite these caveats, I would declare myself an enormous fruitcakes fan. Sadly, work commitments, and a repetitive strain injury to my drinking and saluting arm, mean my days stirring the mixing bowl at the fruitcakes frontline are long gone. My wife, who is a German lady with little time for British fruitcakes, is not prepared to bake my fruitcakes recipes for the small financial incentives I offer her. She buys me instead readymade fruitcakes from Aldi, defying my will at every opportunity, the slut. Women should be banned from buying fruitcakes in shops. Women used to make fruitcakes for thousands of years. Did you know that until 300 years ago a women seen buying a fruitcake would be executed? They don't taste as nice as the homemade ones. Mass-produced fruitcakes don't excite men. Only homemade fruitcakes excite men. If they stop making fruitcakes, then men are going to stop fucking them, do you understand? And may I tell you with great respect that if men don't make love to women the western world is going to disappear? When you get married, you promise to look after the other person for the rest of their life. You certainly don't promise that you're going to go to Aldi to buy fruitcakes. If you bake fruitcakes on Friday and bake fruitcakes on Sunday, you can't say Saturday is Aldi. Once a woman accepts, she accepts, and especially when she makes a vow on her wedding day. Fruitcakes must be home-baked. But some people go out at night and they pick up five, 10, 15 different fruitcakes in one night. They just all go out looking for supermarket fruitcakes. That's the way it is. The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its home-baked fruitcakes will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war. I wrote to David Cameroon in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the sale of supermarket fruitcakes. It is his fault that large swaths of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods. No man, however powerful, can mess with Almighty God with impunity and get away with it. My local Waitrose stocks an award-winning panforte, a variety of fruitcake from Tuscany apparently. I rang up my close friend Tim Rice, the lyricist of Jesus Christ Superstar, and shouted at him: "Can someone explain please how panforte, a Tuscan fruitcake, has won an award in Great Britain? This is no longer a nation that I recognise as my own." Today, I must take whatever fruitcakes crumbs of comfort I can find in the fruitcakes of others. And thus it was with no small degree of excitement that I heard the news, last Thursday morning, that 38% of British people were considering voting for fruitcakes (home-baked) to represent British interests in Europe. The possibilities were thrilling. Suppose a fruitcake won? I wonder how big a fruitcake would have to be for a small and slender man like myself to hide inside it? If I was to conceal my body within the fruitcake for a whole day, while it was shipped out to Brussels, would I need an air supply, beer to drink, fruitcake to eat, Totally Wicked e-cigarettes to suck on, and some of Tim Rice's most rousing music on an iPod to inspire me? (Take That Look Off Your Face from Tell Me On a Sunday, probably.) If I dressed up in my homemade uniform, would the epaulettes, ceremonial daggers and cap badges set off the metal detectors? Imagine! Imagine the looks on their stupid faces. They think they have voted in a harmless fruitcake and then out I jump! Ha! Stewart Lee is performing John Cage's Indeterminacy with Steve Beresford and Tania Chen at Y Tabernacl, Machynlleth at midday today. He is also doing standup in a benefit for Shelter at the Wyndham's theatre, London, on 8 May |