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QVC: A Taste of Wales

A plate of meat
  • Posted at 1:06pm
  • 21 November 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT

You tend to associate the QVC shopping channel with imitation diamonds, or space-saving plastic bags in which you can store your whole family and pop them neatly in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe when they're not needed. But look, QVC can help you out if you're hungry, too.

Kitchen demonstrations aren't a new thing on the channel – umpteen gadgets and gizmos have been flogged over the years by lower-league celebrity chefs – but the idea of demonstrating the advantages of a three-kilo lump of air-dried ham (only £48.66 plus £5.95 postage and packing) is a new one on me. This hour was entirely devoted to Welsh food, and if it were a true reflection of the Welsh diet you'd be hard pushed to say whether they'd succumb to heart disease before scurvy, or the other way around.

There were cakes, followed by pies, followed by sausages, pies, cakes and sausages, with cake and sausages for a main course, lamb for a palate cleanser, and chocolate for pudding, with a plateful of cheese before bedtime to ensure a nightmare-filled slumber in which you found yourself in a never-ending challenge to retrieve a shoulder of pork from a lake of chocolate fondue.

All this produce was hoovered up enthusiastically by QVC regular Debbie Greenwood, encouraged by Angela Gray, a food columnist for the Western Mail. We didn't hear too much from Debbie, who had probably skipped breakfast and lunch in order to really get stuck in to some honest Welsh tucker, and she mostly made noises along the lines of "mmmm", "oooooh", and "nggghhghhhh" while nodding slowly with her eyes shut. Essentially, it was an hour of watching two women ploughing through comfort food.

The fact that the programme was promoting the novel idea of sending you Welsh mince through the post didn't stop those essential QVC quirks shining through. For starters, the build-up of Christmas paraphernalia on the set is gathering momentum. It's common for the first Christmas show of the year to air at some point towards the end of June – "it's never too early to start preparing" – and by the beginning of December you can't move for tinsel, baubles and convincing imitation reindeer.

So obviously they had to give these Welsh treats a festive spin – you know, it's perfect for having at new year, it's an ideal gift for an eccentric uncle, it's fantastic for stuffing your face in a moment of self-indulgence and self-loathing in the bathroom on Boxing Day while no-one is looking.

All the cameras were perfectly angled to pick out the maximum moistness in everything, with glistening puds and oozing roast joints, while Debbie continued to ooh and aah. Oh – and Debbie's a great one for getting us to "imagine" things, which is a standard shopping channel gambit. "Imagine having people over for a buffet," she says. "Imagine serving this at your dinner party." "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try."

I have Welsh blood myself, and I spent many childhood Christmasses in Wales. So while finding QVC as absurd as ever, this was something of a nostalgia trip. I love the fact that one of the brands was called Siwgr a Sbeis (sugar and spice), just as I adore the way that the Welsh spelling of ambulance is ambiwlans. There's pretty.

So I urge everyone to buy cakes from Crickhowell and pies from Pontypridd. And if they've sold out, well, coming up on QVC is a nine-carat gold black rhodium botanical design pendant.

A Taste of Wales was on QVC (Sky 630, Virgin 740, Freeview 16).

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