I’m gonna ask you to do something really hard. Really really hard, but bear with me ok? Because there once was a time when I was young, and the world was a very different place, and I want you to go with me there, just for one moment.
So sit still, close your eyes and breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt at yoga, is that that way of breathing is how a person should always breath (because god help me I thought my party trick of in one nostril and out the other was just the coolest thing since Fido Dido). Anyway, breathe, and concentrate… and push your mind way back to the depths of your adolecense.
Back to a time of scrunchies and crimped hair. A time of leg warmers (oh wait, that’s like now).
Back to a time when Tom Cruise was hot.
Tom Cruise was hot?!
Sorry, you lovely young things of today, but yes, there was a time when the world was warped, Mariah was virginal and Tom Cruise was hot. War-ped.
Tom was still flying high, a clean cut hunk of a superstar, no couch jumping, no scientology ~ he was actually normal. No, he was more than normal, he was Maverick, he was Cole Trickle, he was fucking to-die-for (I don’t really believe I just wrote that), and at the young age of eleven, I was at the cusp of falling madly in lust with him. If I actually knew what lust was.
I have no doubt that way back then, every woman, queen and his bitch were in lust with Tom Cruise. His boyish face, dimples and pre-braces smile ~ utter lust. And god willing, if you were to ever win a dinner date with Tom Cruise, to have a fleeting chance of breathing the air that he’s just breathed (because as long as it’s Tom Cruise’s CO2, it would sustain you for the next bazillion years), you would like so totally ditch your mum’s lamb roast.
Or would you?
It seems like someone, even way back then, knew better.
The year is 1990, and Naomi Watts is a fresh faced young spring chicken, decades away from meeting Heath and Liev (wow, imagine if you knew that that was the line-up in the superfragelistically hot love life that was to be yours). She’s a plain little office girl (although, we at the catty life knew she was gonna burst out of those shoulder pads to become a superhot megastar!) answering phones to get through the day, wiling the hours away thinking about the lamb roast which awaits her at home.
But! The phone rings and she wins dinner with Tom Cruise! Egads!!! “When is it? WHEN IS IT?” She squeals. “What, tonight?” pause. “tonight, like, not tomorrow night, or like next week so I have time to wax my goddamn bushy eye brows?” oh.
“I can’t,” she says. “mum’s cooking a lamb roast.”
And there you have it, people. The tv ad that changed the world. When everyone else was blindly in lust, our Naomi, she had her priorities in order, right from the get go. Ho’s over Bro’s, Lamb over Tom Cruise. I wish I had her foresight. I’d take a two week old milk shake over Tom Cruise these days.
PS: the good people at Abel & Cole sent me more goodies, including lamb cutlets and courgettes which contributed to my version of a better-than-Tom-Cruise dinner ~ lamb cutlets with roast vegetables. Yum!
| Lamb cutlets with roast vegetables |
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| 6 lamb cutlets juice of 1/2 lemon 4 cloves garlic, crushed 4 sprigs rosemary Vegetables for baking (you can use whatever you want, really): carrots courgettes beetroots sweet potatoes cloves of garlic Mixed herbs Olive oil Salt and pepper |
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| Serves 2. |