When Morgan Spurlock’s damning documentary on the fast-food industry, Supersize Me, became, in 2004, the tenth-highest-grossing documentary feature of all time, it was almost inevitable that spin-off documentaries would abound. Three years later, the BBC came up with theirs: Edwardian Supersize Me.
As part of BBC Four’s Edwardians Season, this one-off documentary, perhaps equally surprisingly, became the most watched digital programme the BBC had ever made. Half a million tuned in to witness Giles Coren, the restaurant critic of The Times , and the Radio 4 favourite Sue Perkins live, dress and — most importantly — eat for a week like those in the first decade of the 20th century.
On the surface they were an unlikely pairing — Coren, the heterosexual, unshaven columnist; and Perkins, the lesbian stand-up, known for her appearances on Radio 4 and reality TV. But they played on it, played off each other and gaily, ironically sent up the bourgeois Edwardian couple who they might very well have been while gorging themselves on unspeakable quantities of meat and alcohol.
The cult hit, hilarious and fascinating, turned into a series the following year: Supersizers Go . . . . Now upgraded to BBC Two, the food-history format developed, plunging TV’s hot new documentary couple into six eras, from the Elizabethan period to the 1970s.
Next week the series returns — this time called The Supersizers Eat . . . — with Coren and Perkins reliving six new periods: Roman, Medieval, French Revolution, the 1920s, the 1950s and the 1980s. They eat mule. Peacock. Testicle. And when not masticating the cadavers of highly improbable animals, impart jolly food facts. Did you know, for instance, that one medieval queen was served an enormous pie filled with a dwarf called Geoffrey?
With food being what brought this very 21st-century odd couple together, we sat them down with chips and hotdogs in a West End private members’ club to chew the fat about their latest offering.
How did your experiences living as if in those eras change your perception of the time?
SP The Fifties was interesting in that it made me realise that it was almost worst than the Forties, particularly for women. With all the economic kickback from the war, all the debt, the damage and rationing, and for women the shock of going from working for the war effort to spending 75 hours a week on housework.
Which period did you enjoy living in the most?
GC The 1920s episode had fantastic food, we lived the life of the Bright Young Things and sat about in this 1920s apartment reading Freud and eating things suspended in aspic. It was very jolly. The medieval era was the biggest nightmare to film — long hours, a cold castle, and I was dressed in chainmail eating peacock. But then you watch that particular film back and it’s terrific.
What sort of effects did you suffer from all the food?
GC There were some psychological effects. Sue got quite miserable when we were doing the French Revolution, empathising with Marie Antoinette.
SP Even just the corset was almost unbearable. In that time they wore them from aged 11 and it actually changed their shape — it forces all your stomach fat up and gives you a massive wrack, but then you take it off and it all just falls down into a tyre of flesh. And yet, strangely, it was my favourite outfit to wear: the sheer height of the wig makes you taller than anyone coming towards you, the sheer sway of the hips; you can’t help but walk in a different way. You feel powerful. I never feel powerful.
But from a feminist perspective isn’t that period the most oppressive?
SP But I was playing a queen. From a feminist perspective that’s got to be good.
GC But you were more angry at the 1950s episode, from a woman’s point of view.
SP I was toilet cleaning for a week! I’d been through the war, I’d been on the home front, I’d slept with spivs for sheep’s hearts. And then I have to put my hand down a toilet.
How well do you really get on with each other? You seem like two sparring siblings.
GC Before the show we had only met a few times through my sister Victoria, as she is friends with Sue.
SP But there’s always been an affinity there. It’s quite an unusual dynamic — we’re very similar in some ways and completely different in others. But yes, we bicker like siblings, especially the more we get to know each other.
What do you bicker about?
GC Sometimes it’s just a question of repetition. After a few days of really intense filming, you’ve seen that person do something several times before — like me throwing the food — so it can get quite luvvie. You start to think: “Oh, I think Sue stole that scene. Oh, and in the Eighties episode Sue had better clothes than me.” And then I have to wait an hour because there are eight harpies round Sue’s head doing these wigs while I’m in a T-shirt and jeans.
Is it true that people mistake you for a couple?
GC Yes! Even one of the directors did.
SP People you never expect just make that assumption. They ask, is there unresolved sexual tension? [Joking] And I think it’s fairly clear we would just resolve it.
Of all the horrific food on the show, what was the worst?
SP There was a Roman meal, which featured three of the most awful things I’ve ever eaten: cow’s udder pâté, duck’s tongue and a pig’s womb stir-fry.
GC That was what made the cameraman throw up. The smell was like a rat decomposing in a chimney. You can’t normally buy womb in this country because of BSE, so a researcher went and found one in a Chinese supermarket. Frozen. Labelled “pig uterus”. She took it home and defrosted it.
Were all the check-ups at the doctors that are shown in the series strictly necessary?
GC It was required by the channel because the first series was a pastiche of [the fast-food documentary] .
SP But it’s not nice having a needle shoved in you twice a week for six months and people telling you: “You’ve got a baseball mitt of fat around your kidney!” and, “Did you know you’ve got a cyst?” Also, I found out I’ve got Hashimoto’s disease. Basically my white blood cells attack my thyroid. I did not want to know that.
GC And the doctor told me I had a cholesterol of 7.3 and Gilbert’s syndrome, which makes you prone to jaundice.
In the medieval episode, were either of you at all surprised to learn that Giles is choleric?
[Both laugh] GC It said in the questionnaire: “Do you ever have suicidal feelings?” And I put: “Not really, well sometimes.” Because who doesn’t sometimes wish they were dead?
SP Yes, but you also wish other people were dead.
Sue, you came out in that same medieval test as melancholic. Is that at all accurate?
SP [Pauses] I’m just thoughtful.
GC I think Sue suppresses a lot of emotions. We have the same experience on set — we’ll both be angry with some element that has gone wrong but then I will storm out and shout at the relevant person.
SP And so I go and apologise for him.
GC So they think she’s really nice and I’m really horrible.
What was it like for your partners living with you during the filming?
SP Well my partner [Kate Barker] is a vegetarian, so she would immediately sniff me and go: “Hmm . . . lung? Kidney?” The smell of offal was coming out of my pores. I was constantly drunk as well.
GC I would fall severely in love with myself every time I put on my chainmail outfit or something. So I would phone my girlfriend [Esther Walker] and say: “I’m going to keep my costume on!” But by the time I finally got home full of booze at 11pm I just slept.
You looked good in every single costume though.
GC Hoorah! Looking excellent in the clothes is all I really want. When they were discussing the medieval episode they said: “Maybe you should have a fringe cut,” and I said: “No, I will not look like Blackadder, I will look as handsome as I possibly can. While wearing chainmail.” Sue is much more game for it. They gave her a well dodgy haircut for the 1920s episode.
SP Oh, thanks.
Giles looks like a happy pig in a trough when eating. But Sue, you don’t seem to have such a happy relationship with food.
SP Oh that’s so unfair. I ate a pig’s womb! And I’ve eaten more squirrel than him.
GC I eat more by volume. But then I am a glutton.
SP I have quite a moral thing about food — there’s so much wastage.
When you stepped on the scales and were the heaviest you’d ever been you were horrified.
SP Normally, I eat what I want, but what I don’t want is two bottles of champagne, half a bottle of sherry and a seven-course dinner with someone saying: “We’re running late so we’re going straight into dinner.” I’m upset now that you think I have a problem with food, and I really don’t. I’m nearly 40-years-old and the reality is I put a stone on during the show and it’s quite humiliating going in a [body fat monitor] “bod pod” and being told that you’re one third butter.
GC I weigh myself eight times a day. I’m obsessed with not getting fatter.
Giles, you enthused about the mille feuille with foie gras, was that the best thing you ate all series?
GC It’s hard to remember now, but I did get vast amounts of truffle.
SP The food at Versailles was extraordinary. The cakes. And the frog’s legs were really good.
Have you recovered from some of the accidents? Sue, you had that nasty incident in Versailles when Giles dropped you on the floor.
GC [Laughing] Now she’ll tell you how she broke her coccyx.
SP Well I think I did break it. I simply won’t go to a doctor because to reset a coccyx they have to poke their fingers up your bottom. But I couldn’t sit down for three months. There was a loud crack when he dropped me. So as you can see, he keeps trying to kill me.
What’s next for Supersizers? Can the format continue?
SP It depends how it goes down. Maybe it would have to transform into something else but it’s not our call.
GC I have the impression they [the BBC] quite like us and want us to do more. So we could go aboard and do the Bible era.
SP He has a Jesus complex.
GC Hollywood are interested. But they’re going to put Scarlett Johansson in rather than Sue.
The Supersizers Eat . . . is on BBC Two next Monday at 9pm
