It is Christmas and Santa has somehow decided – based on no evidence as far as I can see in this blasted hellscape of a year – that we have been good enough to have Mary Berry back. And so, having been put away in (I imagine) tissue paper since she was last needed, like a glass bauble, she has been unwrapped and placed in the television schedules to twinkle at us once more, in Mary Berry’s Highland Christmas.
All unfolds as you might hope and expect. The perfect snowy hair. The distinctive voice, fruity yet as clear as crystal. The poise. The beautiful manicure and blouses. The enthusiasm that never ruffles the serenity, and the serenity that never dampens the enthusiasm (“Lovely shiny gravy!”). And the occasional wild flourish that only posh people can deliver – here, an anecdote about buying a whole salmon for her son’s birthday meal, then realising “I didn’t have a fish kettle or anything!” but finding an old tin bath outside and pressing that into service instead.
