Dear Dairy
It’s Great British Cheese Week (bad timing for a blogger who has been hitting the cheese a little hard of late).
But, duty before dishonour: cheese has been eaten and ecotopic heartbeats roundly ignored. Hopefully also Arts Jacket’s first cheese awards coverage: the Global Cheese Awards at Frome happening on Friday (watch this space).
Last Friday saw another major event on the cheese calendar: the 20th Great British Cheese Awards, pegged by organiser Juliet Harbutt as the “Oscars” of the dairy world.
Somewhat ironically, the GB cheese that triumphed as Supreme Champion was a camembert-style cheese, but there you go.
Tunworth, a soft white style cheese produced by Hampshire Cheeses, is described as having a “thin, white, slightly wrinkly, uneven rind that encases the pale yellow, almost runny interior that feels luscious in the mouth. The aroma is earthy with hints of mushrooms while the flavour is like melted butter and wild mushroom soup, with just a dash of sherry… it finishes on a delicate hint of green grass.”
No wonder it won: it’s an octogenarian’s entire dinner in a slice of cheese (yes, even the grass). This is the second time Tunworth has waltzed off with the top prize, a feat achieved by only two other cheeses in the history of the awards (Celtic Promise and Innes Button).
This puts me in mind of Jack Nicholson, also white and slightly wrinkly as well as being two-time winner of the Best Actor Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As It Gets. Apparently unable to remember his lines at the age of 76, his retirement is an unconfirmed rumour which the international press has accepted as fact; in turn, Arts Jacket shall accept it also as fact.
Hollywood will be literally and figuratively poorer without him.
Here we watch Nicholson in retirement, accompanied by a cheeky soundtrack, in Alexander Payne's 2002 About Schmidt: