Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death

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Five years on, I understand more about what happened to my friend. I understand he was trying to protect himself from pain. I didn’t understand it when I was younger. It’s difficult when you are young and you come face-to-face with addiction. We all drank a lot, so it was difficult to detect. It was a slow build, like one long note, getting louder and louder. As teenagers, we’d spend afternoons sitting in his purple bedsit in Cardiff, sipping cheap rum and Coke, breathing in sharply as it stung the roof of our mouths and then we’d laugh and try to act sober on the phone if a parent called. Later, his drinking got worse, but I was too embarrassed to mention it. I saw it as a phase. I was waiting for the plot twist, where he suddenly reveals he had a plan all along, that the drinking was a way into something else, and a new, reformed person would emerge on the other side of the destruction. But it was just more of the same. And then it got worse. Do you know Iyanla Vanzant? She started off on The Oprah Winfrey Show – I love Oprah so much – and she’s a TV therapist/healer/spiritual. She’s got a show you can only get on American TV called Iyanla: Fix My Life. She just speaks so much wisdom. She spends a week with people who are really traumatised and it’s their healing journey. It’s so moving, it’s so profound. She’s doing incredible work for the human race. Interview Extra – The King is Dead". TV Choice. 24 August 2010. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 12 June 2012. A stunning book in which darkness and light, tragedy and humour, pain and hope are all masterfully, affectingly balanced' - Liam Williams A book that has the rare quality of being both poetic and accessible . . . missing Delicacy would be a huge mistake.' - Guardian

The massive one for me, when I was about 11 or 12: Ghostwatch. I went to a friend’s house to watch it and I remember being a bit like ‘yeah right’ watching it, and then when I got home that night, I just cried. I was in the bath, hysterical and my mum had to come in and calm me down. It was horrendous. Brimming with graceful, charming writing – this book perfectly encapsulates so many moments we face as girls and women and I only wish I’d read it sooner’– Kiri Pritchard-McLeanMorris, Mary (18 June 2021). "Lemon Drizzle: A life told in cake-related moments". The Times Literary Supplement . Retrieved 21 February 2023.

Katy Wix: It’s so interesting, that idea of guilt. In school you’re taught about this very clear world of right and wrong that isn’t really there. But it’s so confusing because no one has to say to girls directly that food is bad but these messages are transmitted — consciously or unconsciously — through our mothers and the people around us. When I interviewed Susie Orbach [author of Fat is a Feminist Issue ] she was saying that in our culture it is almost impossible to be fully healed, but if you’re kind of 80% recovered, that’s a really good place to be. Also, you know in the 90s, late at night you’d get some weird, bizarre performance art happening on BBC Two? I miss that. The sort of stuff that was on after The Word. And then finally, maybe just all of Peep Showagain?Mary left the rest of the Ghosts in episode four… (Credit: BBC) Why did Mary – actress Katy Wix – leave Ghosts?

Deeply comforting in how relatable it is, hilarious, and moving. I felt like this book was my best friend as soon as I started reading it' Whatever the reason Katy Wix decided to leave the show, it’s clear her character will be hugely missed! How did fans react to Katy Wix leaving the role of Mary?It’s like the way some writers think ‘strong female lead’ means a female character who is capable of violence/revenge, but it takes just as much strength to be fat or depressed. I binge-watched Taskmaster recently and loved how creative Katy was in her series. Then when she had a stand-in for a couple of episodes I was something like intrigued (too nosy/cold) or concerned (too earnest). I’ve always been interested by people’s absence. I remember at school when someone would go to the medical room and then get sent home. I’d be so distracted by their abandoned belongings and the empty seat. Those things drew attention to the fact that we’d be carrying on with our days as normal whilst our friend was consumed by their debilitating personal drama, probably throwing up or plagued with toothache or feeling like the world was going to end. One day we ourselves would probably be that empty seat, and everyone would just carry on doing sums. When Katy was missing, I sensed that she was struggling with more than a cold, and it made the laughter in the episode feel hollow. Katy sees the world like no one else and deciphers it with extraordinary beauty. Delicacy took my breath away' - Lolly Adefope I even kept it hidden from him. When I first moved to London, he stayed in Cardiff, but we would spend hours on the phone most evenings. My flatmate said she always knew when I was talking to him because of the laughter coming from my room. Escapism was a big part of our friendship. She was burned at the stake on the grounds of Button House, implying she worked there as a servant.

And sadly, liked the rest of her ghoulish friends, we have to accept that she probably won’t return. Before my friend died I was too shy to write, definitely too shy to write autobiographically, and now I can’t stop. But I’d trade all the words for him’: Katy Wix. Photograph: Roo Lewis/The Observer Gentle, heartbreaking, laugh out loud funny and poetically told –an intimate memoir that stays with you’ Katy Victoria J Wix (born 28 February 1980) [1] is a Welsh actress, writer, author and artist. She is best known for portraying Carole in Stath Lets Flats, Mary in Ghosts, Barbara in Ted Lasso, Jules in Big Boys, Fanny in Miranda and Daisy in Not Going Out. She has also appeared as a series contestant on Taskmaster and as a recurring character in the science fiction mini-series Torchwood: Children of Earth in 2009. [2] She has written two series of her own sitcom for BBC Radio 4, Bird Island and a sketch show for Channel 4, Anna & Katy. In 2017 her painting was chosen for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. She has written two books of monologues and in 2021 she published her first work of non-fiction, Delicacy.Caragh Medlicott: I was thinking the other day about those little souvenir magnets you can buy, the kind mums love, where they say stuff like “I’m watching my weight — but it’s not going anywhere!”. It’s a joke, but also it points to the longevity of it — of how it’s taken as given that women are always dieting.