Frozen Fish Fingers

How does anyone end up with the name "Clarence Birdseye?" It's a mystery, but the aforementioned gentleman most certainly existed and I'm one of many millions who grew up with the frozen fare he made his name from.

These days, I don't buy fish fingers very often, especially while I'm currently trying to cut down on my calorie intake to shed some of my ample girth. Like too many people in the affluent West though,I'm often thinking of food, which is understandable given that there is such a tempting array of it in super-sized hypermarkets run by the giants of the grocery world in modern Britain.

While there's nothing wrong with variety, particularly when it introduces us to the cuisine of other cultures, much of the problem of the 21st Century World is we have too much choice. We've opened a Pandora's chest freezer which does both our bodies and our spirits no good at all.

Television's love affair with the cookery show is abundant testimony to both the good and the bad in matters culinary. The BBC's latest variation on a theme, which ended its first run last night in between the latest calorie-burning thrills from the frozen rinks and runs of Olympic Italy, is "Two Hairy Bikers". This bizarre pairing, no doubt inspired by the Two Fat Ladies stable of programme making, has actually proved to be a bitter-sweet show, and I'm not talking chocolate or Seville oranges here.

The unlikely duo of two-wheeled Geordie petrolheads have been focussing this fortnight on Romania, a country with a sad past which is still struggling to shake off the evil legacy of Ceaucescu. To the credit of the two hirsute presenters, in between concocting mouth-watering delights they visited a museum about that nation's evil tyrant who met his fate while in a turning- aside West millions feasted on Christmas Day 1989.

The bikers' visit to the museum was an emotional experience not normally associated with indulgent food programmes. One of them understandably vented his anger at how the complicit West yielded to the temptation to eat at the table of this madman, while his actions ended or shattered the lives of millions, not least helpless children, the sight of whose pitiful existence still produces more tears than an onion.

Food fattens, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thank God then, that the one who saves our souls from our own awfulness did not yield to the temptation to eat, or even drink, for forty scorching days and frozen nights in the wilderness, which we now commemorate as the Christian season of Lent.

As observance of Lent 2006 rapidly approaches and Britons look forward to the delights of Pancake Day on "Fat Tuesday", I'm glad that the sign of the fish can lead even my frozen fingers this chilly night - our central heating's broken down- to prayer to the one who never yielded to the temptation to sin. He alone was nice but never naughty. Instead, he gave up his life to the hands of an evil regime and an angry, ignorant mob- even forgiving them as he did so. Thanks be to God that as he thawed from the stone-cold tomb, the lives of those who choose to believe in his unique life and name can be preserved for evermore. That's a mystery which should be on every menu.