Following the reference to Aerobics Oz Style in my last post. Peter, who clearly has too much time on his hands, cranked up Photoshop and came up with the following.

Yay Peter!

It’s not often that you get to meet one of your heroes, and tonight was one such night for me. I met Italian TV chef Antonio Carluccio.

For those of you who are not familar with his work, Carluccio did a TV series that aired on the ABC around 10 years ago. He went around Italy and showed off the regional culinary highlights of wherever he happened to be filming. It was sensational stuff. I have the video of the series in one of my many boxes of stuff back home, and to this day I am quite annoyed that they’ve never released it on DVD.. He has published several Italian cook books, of which I have a couple – and has 19 cafe/restaurants across London, which I love, but more about that another time…

Anyway, I’m a huge fan of the guy. His passion for Italian food appears to be matched by his knowledge on the topic. So really, how could I not like him?

Tonight he was giving a short talk on food in Renaissance Italy as part of an exhibition currently running at the fabulous Victoria & Albert museum here in London. He spoke for about 40 minutes to a very appreciative crowd of about 200 people. Did you know that tomatoes didn’t feature in Italian cuisine back in the 1500s? I didn’t. There was a huge table laid out with ingredients typical of the period – cheese, prosciutto, various fruits, vegetables… and what appeared to be a dead rabbit. He basically rambled on about each of them and described how they might have been served/prepared.. It was very entertaining – I loved it.

He got talking about balsamic vinegar, and how a lot of the cheap rubbish in the supermarkets here is essentially regular vinegar with burnt sugar added. To quote Mad Magazine – BLECCH!
Got to get down to Modena the spiritual home of balsamic vinegar, part with some serious cash, and see what the truly great stuff is like.

At the end there was a Q&A session. I had every intention of coming up with an insightful and thought provoking contribution – but sitting where I was he never would have seen my raised hand. Just as well since nothing terribly poignant sprang to mind…

When the session was over, I went down the front, shook the mans hand and said g’day. Rather, I told him in Italian that I was a huge fan. Again, nothing terribly intelligent came to mind – I just wanted to say hi and express my gratitude for the joy his work has brought me – which is precisely what I did.. I was thrilled.

Next? I’d like to meet Robert Fripp from King Crimson – just so I can gloat to my brother. The chances of this happening, however, are about as likely as me hosting an edition of Aerobics Oz Style.

Olivia is a big fan of the show “Sex in the City“, so a few weeks ago I thought I’d surprise her with a gift and buy the box set of all six seasons of the show..

(Writing that last sentence has reminded me of another Six Seasons… Those of you from my early choir days will undoubtedly remember that awful Indian piece of the same name we sang in a MonUCS/MUCS concert in 1993… Ganeka Rasatapakaaaa … oh the memories.. Oh my god – I’ve found a site where you can listen to excerpts of that fateful, generation defining piece.. You will need to install the Shockwave player if you don’t already have it – but gees it’s worth it.. For those of you that don’t remember, the movement we sang was Sharad (Autumn) Have mercy on our souls… Stuart, o how I hope you read this)

Anyway…

So I found a reasonably cheap copy of the Sex in the City box set on Ebay. After an Ebay transaction that was far more painful transaction than it needed to be, the package eventually turned up at my work.

As it turned out I’d bought from some guy selling dodgy Chinese copies of all manner of TV shows on DVD.. How did I know it was dodgy? Well, the picture below pretty much spells it out – so to speak.

“Special Editiong” hey? Faux velvet box and all – you think they’d spring for a proof reader..

So that night, when I came home from work I said to Olivia.. “I’ve got a suprise for you” She asked what it was, to which I replied that it was something which ended in the letter G.. Knowing that we could have been there all night… I didn’t drag the moment out too long.. and we both chuckled heartily.. To me it was a bit reminiscent of the time in high school when Johnny Cornetta bought a cheap calculator from the Bundoora market. It was a moment of utter hilarity when it was pointed out that his calculator was not Sharp brand, rather SHRAP.

Fortunately the Sex in the City Special Editiong works just fine, just as Johnny Cornetta’s Shrap did, if I remember correctly.

Is this guy taking the p!ss or what? Funkulo indeed.