Nigella

It seems that everywhere I go this week I see Nigella Lawson. I’m out buying a newspaper and she’s staring out at me from the magazine racks. I switch on the TV and there she is, doing that whole soft-focus suggestive thing in the kitchen that’s part Delia Smilth, part Sylvia Kristel. It seems TV’s pouty domestic goddess is plugging a brand-new series on the BBC, Nigella Express. Good on her, I say.

Here’s what bothers me about Nigella Lawson: her father is former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson. Now, far be it for me to criticise anyone’s parenting skills – let alone a former Tory front-bencher – but am I the only person here who thinks the Lawsons’ could have put just a wee bit more effort into coming up with a name for their daughter? I mean, I know these Champions of Industry types are busy people, but to me adding the suffix ‘ella’ to the father’s bloke-ish forename and trying to pass it off as a girl’s name seems self-indulgent, uninspired and possibly even lazy.

Thank God this kind of thing hasn’t caught on, otherwise Salmon Rusdie would have called his daughter ‘Salmonella’.