Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death

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It is – in many ways – an experience common to womanhood, the realisation that being a girl, being a woman, is hard; that after your body ceases – as Wix puts it – to be a “neutral zone”, there is an embarking upon a journey of push-and-pull, the denial of sustenance combined with the inevitable craving, and caving, to the numbing power of coveted food. Then when she had a stand-in for a couple of episodes I was something like intrigued (too nosy/cold) or concerned (too earnest). I always want to say, yeah, it was — but what’s more difficult is just making a good piece of writing. I asked a friend to get me some cream for the mysterious rash that appeared all over my body, 24 hours after his death. It’s true that those familiar with Wix’s television work might have anticipated a very different book, one reflective of her quick humour and wit, but Delicacy is still darkly – and fabulously – funny.

Though each of the chapters of Delicacy feature a cake in its title, this – as its subtitle pre-warns – is not just a memoir about food and body issues. When she finally achieves the goal of ‘thinness’ in her early twenties she is appalled to find that “being thin means nothing” – a revelation which means facing up to the perpetually undelivered societal promise that “someone would meet my outrageous needs if I could just memorise a few weight-loss tips”.When Katy was missing, I sensed that she was struggling with more than a cold, and it made the laughter in the episode feel hollow. And our skin would flush with the excitement of the future as we signed our names on their cream casts. The Bara brith eaten in hospital after a life-altering car crash was as tough as the metal that hit her. The tears fell down my cheeks and on to the pillow, making it wet, because I couldn’t wipe them away. The only thing he said, as we spilled out on to the street, was that he found adult life “boring and uncreative”.

I was waiting for the plot twist, where he suddenly reveals he had a plan all along, that the drinking was a way into something else, and a new, reformed person would emerge on the other side of the destruction. I just remember thinking, you feel bad about fibbing or fighting with your siblings, but not about something nice like ice cream. You realise that you are probably trying to fulfil your parents’ unrealised creative dreams, and yet she demonstrates to you that womanhood equals martyrdom. I paused my never-ending projects of self-improvement (get Michelle Obama arms, read Middlemarch, give up Diet Coke).Although she works in comedy, I found it refreshing that this memoir was in no way a nod to the other celebrities in her life. Caragh Medlicott: One of the things that struck me while reading your description of grief was that idea of “hoarding time”. Apparently this book took the author three years to finish -to quote: “because life kept getting in the way and people kept dying,” which definitely makes sense, having now finished reading it. The star has also created her own TV comedy show Fat Camp, set in a children’s diet retreat, which she also stars in.