One Wild Lady

Xmastime has always loved hisself some Two Fat Ladies, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago when Brothatime!! pointed it out that I knew what a wild ride Clarissa Dickson Wright had on the way to being a BBC cooking star:

- At the age of 21, Dickson Wright passed her exams and became the country's youngest barrister ever.
- After her mother died of a heart attack in 1975, she inherited £2.8 million.
- Her mother's death, combined a few years later with her father's, left her in a deep depression, and she drank heavily for the following 12 years.
- Dickson Wright claims that, during her alcoholic years, she had sex with an MP behind the Speaker's chair in the House of Commons.
- By 1983, she was homeless and staying with friends.
- For two years she was cook-housekeeper for a family in Sussex until she was fired for her alcohol-induced behaviour.

Read part of her alcohol/sex addiction story HERE:

I also developed the habit of flipping cars into ditches. I did this twice with my employers' cars and each time was unhurt. I would remain in the car with a gin bottle and a book until I finished the gin or the book, or the light faded, when I would extricate myself and wander off to find a pub and a phone.