Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a cook. Her father was a brilliant surgeon but an alcoholic and his daughter suffered in the same way.

Inheriting a small fortune in her late 20s, she drank it all away within a few years.

Though her money disappeared, her intelligence, wit and culinary skills

survived to be discovered eventually by television.

In the programme Two Fat Ladies, she famously partnered Jennifer Patterson in a series of highly entertaining and eccentric cookery adventures.

Jennifer died earlier this year, so what now for the lady left behind the lady with the pathological hatred of

carrots who once knocked out an Alsatian with her bare fists and who rejoices

or suffers in the name of Clarissa,

Phelmina, Aileen, Mary, Josephine, Agnes,

Elsie Trilby, Louise, Esmeralda, Dixon,

Wright.

Forgive me, Clarissa, but it is a completely ridiculous handle.

What were your parents thinking of?

Well, they had great trouble deciding what to call me in the first place.

I mean, they went through all sorts of various things like Vabiner and Nijela,

and then they blindfolded my mother and turned her loose in the library and

thank God she pulled out Richardson's Clarissa and not the Encyclopedia Britannica and

then I think they were so delighted they finally found and found a name they got

pissed on the way to the church.

What is it that you have against the humble carrot?

...