The beast buried in Mary Berry’s garden | Letters
Seeing Mary Berry’s old house in your property pages (Fantasy house hunt: Ultimate fantasy homes for sale in Great Britain, 29 December) brought back a happy memory. In the 1980s I was cookery editor at Family Circle magazine and we worked a lot with Mary, including photoshoots at her home. When I found an intriguing Prue Leith recipe for a hog roast – not the now-familiar pig on a spit but an underground, overnight barbecue affair – Mary kindly agreed that we could cook it during a camping weekend at the end of her garden.
The 96lb beast – named O’Toole after the butcher’s tag on his ear – was duly delivered, a pit the size and shape of a grave was dug and the base lined with bricks. We lit an enormous charcoal fire inside, then buried the wrapped pig in the glowing coals with the excavated soil heaped on top. Twenty-four hours later we dug up Pig O’Toole and what a feast he provided for Mary, her husband and 40 hungry campers. Of course, we made good the site but it did cross my mind that, one day in the future, a developer or aerial survey might reveal what appears to be an unmarked grave.
Gilly Cubitt
Temple Ewell, Kent
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