Clarissa Dickson Wright: 'They don't call me Krakatoa for nothing'

Clarissa Dickson Wright, one half of the Two Fat Ladies and a former alcoholic, is more likely to carry a shotgun than a handbag. But, as Nigel Farndale discovers, she still cries easily

Clarissa Dickson Wright: USA is 'unbearable'
Clarissa Dickson Wright began her television career after being asked to make a cookery programme with friend Jennifer Paterson Credit: Photo: MARTIN POPE

There is a bluntness to Clarissa Dickson Wright, which disarms as much as it disconcerts. She never "dislikes" things, she "hates" them: her father, oil seed rape, the welfare state. Gordon Brown is "that foul man". And if you compliment her on the cheerfulness of her shirt, she will say dismissively: "It makes me look like a sofa." Hesitate when trying to think of a polite way to refer to her weight, and she will finish your sentence for you: "You mean fat?"

It seems to be a form of defence, this confrontational style. But also perhaps a sign of her impatience with those she considers foolish, which is just about everybody. She has an alpha brain and a low and steady voice, with a delivery that is clipped and typical of her class. Her father was the Queen Mother's surgeon, and she moved in aristocratic circles as a child. She still does, actually. As one of the most high-profile champions of field sports in the country, she is the darling of the landed gentry.

Her lack of compromise on this subject is reflected in the photograph on the jacket of her new book, Rifling Through My Drawers. She is carrying a shotgun and wearing plus fours. The book is a collection of anecdotes and political opinions, rather than a sequel to her best-selling memoir Spilling the Beans.

The beans she spilled in that book included an account of how her alcoholic father beat her as a child and how she, as a result, became such an alcoholic herself that she squandered her inheritance – the equivalent of around £15 million today – and would pretty much sleep with any man who would buy her a drink. She has been sober for 22 years now (she is 62), but seems to wear her past on her face: the broken veins, the unplucked hairs, the pale blue eyes that have out-stared the world. Complex and as tough as old boots, yes; one of life's victims, no.

We are reminiscing about Jennifer Paterson, the other half of the BBC's former Two Fat Ladies cookery show, whom I knew a little. "Jennifer was deeply eccentric," she says. "Always positive. Spent a lot of time singing, which would drive me nuts. Her great joy was to try and stick in my brain some Noël Coward tune or other, and the minute it became unstuck she would sense it and start singing it again."

They had a devoted following. Any groupies? "I don't have the figure for it, but I remember when Jennifer and I were in Australia, I used to get left notes with people's room numbers saying, 'Come and see me.' Jennifer thought this terribly funny. No one left them for her. Perhaps they thought I was more racy. I never took them up on it, but I did used to look through the crowd and think 'Oooh, which one?'"

When Paterson died in 1999, anti-hunt protesters shouted at Dickson Wright: "One dead Fat Lady, one to go." "It was the most awful thing because it wasn't long after Jennifer died. I usually pay no attention to the bloody antis because they are so awful, but I thought that was plain vicious. Clearly they are sick people."

She has received numerous death threats since. "They only stopped sending the written ones when I said on television that I was going to have an exhibition of them to raise money for the campaign for hunting. Special Branch have taken away the most unpleasant ones for their files. I remember at a book-signing the antis came and sprayed us with red paint and the queue was fantastic about it. They asked if they could have the books with the red paint on. And in Norwich, they mobbed us because the police cordon hadn't worked. I just put my head down and went for the taxi. The antis were bouncing on the roof when we got in."

Does she ever feel like retaliating? I mean, what if she was down a dark ally with one of them and she had a baseball bat in her hand? "Oh, I wouldn't need a baseball bat. I once had two people attempt to mug me and they both ended up in intensive care. I can handle myself. The reason one doesn't retaliate is that one doesn't want to stoop to their level."

You wonder if that story can be true, as you wonder about some of the more picaresque moments in her memoir. Her sister, with whom she has fallen out, has accused her of exaggerating her accounts of being beaten by her father. Still, her image of herself as a scrapper is revealing. Did she inherit her temper from her father? "Since I stopped drinking, it is a different sort of temper to his, but they don't call me Krakatoa for nothing. I have an explosive temper which goes up and down. Everyone is left shuddering in the wake of it, and a minute later, when I'm calm again, I'm wondering why everyone is looking at me nervously. I suppose that's why I never get depressed. Depression is the reverse side of anger. Anger internalised." She cries easily though, she adds, "but not deeply. Trooping the Colour or Remembrance Sunday will make me cry, or a soppy film. I cry from sentiment and anger, that is all."

And she is not afraid of dying. "I would be quite happy to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland come the time. The thing is, if you are the sort of alcoholic that I was, death becomes an old friend. You never know which bottle is going to kill you and you stop being afraid of it."

She felt no guilt about betraying her father in her memoirs. "I realised during recovery that if I could not forgive my father then I could never forgive myself, because I had become so like him in my drinking. Thank God I never had children to terrorise. I told the counsellor this and they did the gestalt [a therapy that uses role-play to resolve past conflicts]. I was so angry that they took all the furniture out of the room, apart from the chair I was sitting on.

"With the gestalt you try and summon up the image of the person you want to talk to. I could see my father there quite clearly, as if a photograph of him was projected on the back wall. To my amazement I said: 'You poor, silly idiot, all we really wanted was to love you and have you love us.' Where the f--- did that come from? Excuse my French. After that, I burst into tears. I didn't love him because there was nothing there to love."

She became a barrister to spite her father – he hated lawyers – and at 21, having already graduated from UCL, she became the youngest woman ever to be called to the bar. A few years later she was disbarred because of her drinking. Earlier this month, Dickson Wright drew upon her legal background when she pleaded guilty to hare-coursing. Had she wanted to play the martyr?

"I don't think an absolute discharge counts as martyrdom, my dear. But I would gladly go to prison for my convictions. It would be nice and peaceful and I could write a prison cookbook."

I tell her that while I am in favour of a repeal of the ban on fox-hunting, I feel less comfortable about hare-coursing, in part because the pest-control argument doesn't hold. It seems to be just about pleasure.

"Oh dearie me, what a puritan you must be. But they do need controlling, actually. Bear in mind that a hare eats 40lbs of vegetation a week. Death in the countryside is different to death in the town; it is part of the way of life. Farmers love and care for their livestock, then send them off for slaughter. All field-sports people are doing is turning an inevitable necessity into a pleasure. If the animal is going to be killed anyway, why not take pleasure in it? But I can see that is a matter of personal choice. Have you ever been hare-coursing?" I shake my head. "Then you can't pass judgment on it."

That can't be right, surely. You can disapprove of homicide without having witnessed a murder. "Some murders are justified. If I had killed my father I would have been justified because of the way he behaved. But I don't anthropomorphise. I don't equate human life to animal life."

It strikes me that the difference between Dickson Wright's public and private personas is her serious-mindedness. Does she regret the way she deliberately made herself a figure of fun by agreeing to the title Two Fat Ladies? "No, because if you can make people laugh you can win arguments. I discovered that when I was a barrister. On the last big countryside march there was such good humour. A very British trait. There was also a sense of passion and resolve. As Chesterton said: 'We are the people of England and we haven't spoken yet.e_SSRq" She dabs her eyes. "Sorry, that poem always makes me cry ..."

Her face clears. "That was an enjoyable chat," she says. "I dare say when I read the article I shall hate you forever."

'Rifling Through My Drawers' by Clarissa Dickson Wright (Hodder, £19.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £17.99 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1516, or visit books.telegraph.co.uk