I call this story Just Citronella. It is something I wrote for a sort of joke.
Citronella was a TV cook who rose to fame for her charming way of saying what she did and didn't like on her plate. She said NO! to cracked black peppercorns in her pasta sauce, that was NOT! what she wanted. She said Yes! to an entire steak sliced thinly for one lunch. She started her career on a less well known TV channel but her enthusiasm and decisive ways soon caught the attention of a more popular channel. The producer on the popular channel started to get nervous that Citronella's personality and recipes alone might not be enough to get the viewing figures they'd need. So they suggested Citronella mix in some jokes with her cookery. Citronella was keen to please at that point and so she worked in a joke about a fake noodle being an impasta to her Sesame Peanut Noodles dish. As she introduced her Pizza Rustica she teased a joke about a pizza, but then refrained from telling it for fear it was 'way too cheesy'. But the joke that really rocketed Citronella to new levels of fame was when she made Chocolate and Toffee Vanilla Shortbread, and she said 'People often ask me how I smuggle chocolate into the cinema? Well..... I have a few Twix ™ up my sleeve'. This spread like wild on the internet. People even made Citronella's Chocolate and Toffee Vanilla Shortbread just to smuggle into the cinema for a joke. Her publisher's market research showed a rare case of a joke book being predicted to be more popular than a cook book. Although hugely popular, these gags made Citronella feel cheap and sad. This was NOT! what she wanted and so along with the cracked black peppercorns in her pasta sauce, she rejected her TV personality and took to reviewing perfumes for a high class fashion magazine who never saw a single thing funny in fragrances.
The mission was to write about my fascination with TV chefs. For something that started out as a bit of joke the notes and revisions for this piece were huge. At one point I wrote a whole story about someone who was both a baker and hula hooper :
She was a baker but one thing other people didn't know is that she loved to hula hoop. Not just love, she wanted to do it more than bake, she could hoop for hours and never let it fall below her ankles.
From that story I got to the idea of a TV executive trying to shape the persona of the chef. In this case the executive suggested the hula hoop remained a private hobby as they could not find one way that the activity would fit with cooking. The hula hoop chef continued to have a baking show but all the heart had gone out of it. Also I looked up food jokes as you can probably tell. Here is one that didn't make it into the story Question: Where do you learn how to make ice cream? Answer: Sundae School. Then I blended in things I noticed small children doing when they are extremely discerning and a bit furious at the same time. For example I saw a child in a restaurant who had ordered Macaroni and Cheese and the dish came served with a sprinkling of cress on top. The child expressed their fury at the cress with phases like This is NOT what I wanted! as they plucked every strand of the garnish off the cheese topping. I really like writing the Citronella character, they are picky and opinionated but they look into things with a level of detail that I kind of love.