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UK starting to feel the pressure of crispy roast potatoes

WITH just three days until Christmas dinner, Britons are starting to crack under the pressure of being expected to make perfect crispy roast potatoes.

Thanks to celebrity chefs, every potato must meet precise standards of crispness, goldenness and fluffiness, and anyone whose potatoes fall short should consider themselves worthless scum who have ruined Christmas for everyone.

Mum Donna Sheridan said: “I can’t take this level of pressure. What if the potatoes come out brown instead of the exact shade of golden on Nigella’s website? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

“Or what if I parboil them too much and they fall apart when I try to shake them in a pan like Delia says? There won’t be any lovely crunchy bits and I’ll have failed as a wife, a mother and a human being. 

“I’m sure my own mum used to just chuck the potatoes in the oven and spoon a bit of meat juice on them, but some things just aren’t acceptable anymore, like casual racism and not heating up the goose fat until it’s smoking.”

Sheridan’s husband Ian said: “I’d like to tell Donna it doesn’t matter. But it does. It matters more than she will ever realise. If those potatoes aren’t perfect we’ll be the laughing stock of our street. If people put dogshit through our letterbox, we’ll deserve it.

“Our only hope of restoring our family’s honour and status will be for me to commit hara-kiri in the front garden. I’ve already ordered the traditional samurai disembowelling swords from Amazon.

“It sounds extreme, but if the potatoes aren’t perfect, what is there to live for?”

Charcuterie board just fancy Lunchables, woman realises

A WOMAN eating a grown-up, sophisticated platter of meats and cheeses has realised it is basically the processed snack she used to eat at school.

Lauren Hewitt was happily grazing on the artistically arranged charcuterie board until she became aware it was essentially a large version of ‘Lunchables’, but vastly more expensive. 

Hewitt said: “I’d just laid out the camembert next to some prosciutto I spent 20 minutes rolling into inexplicable logs when it hit me – this is just Dairylea on steroids.

“Yes, the ham might have cost three times as much. And, sure, I’ve got grapes too, but they’re just like the fruit my mum used to chuck in as an afterthought. The whole board is basically a deconstructed lunch box that I’ve somehow turned into a time-consuming art project.

“The magic is ruined. I really thought I’d found a way to have meals that looked incredibly fancy without f**king cooking, but now it’s back to the drawing board. Unless I just give up on saving any money ever and start buying caviar.

“The only major difference is figs. Eight-year-old me wouldn’t have eaten a sodding fig. And the crackers are from M&S not Poundland, so that’s got to count for something, surely?”

Friend Nikki Hollis said: “I could have told Lauren ages ago that her Instagrammable feast is basically just bread and cheese, ie. the favoured food of peasants and kids. But I don’t care because those two ingredients are all the human body needs.

“And, let’s be honest, no one ever eats the figs anyway.”

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