Two Brits

Two Brits who get gold stars from me this week are Helen Mirren and Jamie Oliver.

We have been watching the drama 'Elizabeth the First' with 60 year-old Dame Helen playing the Queen from her late 40's through to her death. Even though if you say the name 'Helen Mirren' you expect excellence, I have still been just spellbound by her performance. There are no cracks, no seams, no smudginess about it, you can't see the acting, it is as though she has become Queen Elizabeth the first and you have actually travelled back in history and are watching the state of mind of the real queen. You can see her thinking, her torment, her uncertainty. She is tortured by the decision of having to sign Mary Queen of Scots' death warrant. You feel the cold shock with her as she realises she has been misled into putting to death her physician. I love all the skirt kissing too. I wonder if just being in her presence could improve the skills of some of Hollywood's overpaid and overhyped, the rest of the cast with her in Elizabeth the first are flawless too, I'm sure due to good casting and directing, but I'm thinking a little bit of 'just being in her presence'. I've run out of hyperbole, but Dame Helen truly deserves more.

Jamie I know, is not every Brit's favourite. I think the reason he has never annoyed me is that I hadn't ever seen one of his cooking shows before coming to Canada, and well, I just liked his little chirpy cockney-ness when I saw it on Food Network Canada.
I had of course met his entire family through his Sainsbury's ads, marvelled at his nan on a motor scooter. When you've met someone's nan and they are that much fun, well you can't not love the person.
My respect for him went through the roof when he did Jamie's school dinners. Whichever way you dice it, editing, whatever, that programme changed the Burrough of Greenwich's academic results and it affected government policy. It was also compulsive viewing.
Now we're watching 'Jamie's Italian Escape' which I think he started during the filming of the School Dinners show, and so I'm sure has already aired in Britain.
It's not that we're learning too much about Italian food, but I am tremendosuly impressed at Jamie's willingness to speak Italian. Not in that British 'terribly sorry, I know I'm rubbish' kind of way, but in the way that other Europeans approach English. Jamie throws in all the words he knows, he lets his hands speak, he asks for words, and over the course of the episodes we have watched, we have seen him being able to understand more and use more Italian. I have no doubt that he has a translator with him, but what we see is Jamie listening and learning and then using the language.
I was equally respectful of his anxiety over having to kill an animal. He goes through on camera the kind of worries that any of us might in that situation. Meat isn't made in a factory by Sainsbury's, it always starts as a living creature. Jamie helps to select and carry the sheep to where it is to be slaughtered. The killing happens off camera though, I don't think Jamie did it,
'I've never killed a sheep before, not with a knife,' he said. We understood what he meant when he was about to shoot a wild boar.

Two Brits, quite different, both experts in their fields, but I'm sure if you spoke to them both would assure you they were still learning, and believe it themselves and that in itself is so very British.
Gold stars all round.