Fill-ett or Fil-ay?

I don't normally watch the Cooking Channel - I'm a meat and potatoes girl, I am - but I was channel surfing after watching UConn get defeated by the Oklahoma Sooners (football) and came across Two Fat Ladies. I'd heard of this show - two fat ladies who drive around England in a motorcycle, and cook food.

I'm an Anglophile. When I was young and, more importantly, when my sister lived over there, I went over once a year to take in some plays and drive around the country looking at castles.

And they're fun, although the commercials every five minutes get extremely annoying.

I can't quite place their accents - they say ays instead of ohs (I'm gay-ing to put this sauce on this fish) and so on, a favorite actor of mine, Dinsdale Landen, had the same accent...

But it's interesting, when you listen to British actors pronounce French words, they always pronounce them with a French accent, i.e., properly. But both these ladies pronounce filet - as in beef filet - as fil-ett. Too funny. [And who knew the Brits pronounced oregano, or-a-gah-no, instead of or-egg-uh-no?]

Now I wouldn't eat anything these women cook, not because I don't think they cook well, but because I hate fish, and most vegetables and fruits, and all the other things they cook are way too fancy for me, but it's fun to watch them, and to hear their interplay.

And of course, they're fat. Not extremely obese, but about 100 pounds overweight. Which means they can still move and get about fine.

And the joy of this show is that they are not concerned about calories at all. Or cholesterol. They don't even mention them. It's up to their viewers to cook the food, and portion it out amongst their table companions, and maybe save some for the next day so they don't get a whacking great influx of calories all in one night.

To tell the truth, I doubt if this show is ever shown in England anymore. Just as the English "nanny state" has gone in and digitally removed cigarettes from old movies, so they probably don't want to have these two women, comfortable with their weight, acting as a bad influence on Englanders today who simply must, must, not be overweight!

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that being 100 pounds overweight is healthy for you - I am saying it should be a person's business how much they weigh, and they shouldn't be verbally abused by others because of it. On the other hand, it's ridiculous for an extremely overweight person (i.e., someone 50 or more pounds over weight) to sue a doctor who tells her she is fat and must lose weight, because he "hurt her feelings" (this actually happened). It's a doctor's responsibility - not a layperson's - to give people medical advice, and of course having weight in proportion to your height is simply healthy. Being too thin is worse than being too fat. But being more than 50 pounds overweight cause you so many problems - all that weight to carry on your feet - that it is simply more healthy - especially as you get into your 60s and 70s, to not have to carry that extra weight around.