Clarissa Dickson Wright

Clarissa Dickson Wright
Dickson Wright at a fundraising dinner for the Countryside Alliance in 2011.
Born	(1947-06-24)24 June 1947 St John's Wood, London, England
Died	15 March 2014(2014-03-15) (aged 66) Edinburgh, Scotland
Occupation	Television personality, celebrity chef, businesswoman, author, barrister
Years active	1996–2014

Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright (24 June 1947 – 15 March 2014) was an English celebrity chef, television personality, writer, businesswoman, and former barrister. (She claimed to be the youngest person to be called to the Bar at the time). She was best known as one of the Two Fat Ladies, with Jennifer Paterson, in the television cooking programme. She was an accredited cricket umpire and one of only two women to become a Guild Butcher.

Dickson Wright was born in St John's Wood, London, the youngest of four children. Her father, Arthur Dickson Wright, was a surgeon to the Royal Family, and her mother, Aileen Mary (Molly) Bath, was an Australian heiress. She said her father was an alcoholic who subjected his wife and children to verbal and physical abuse. However, her elder sister, Heather, says Clarissa’s claims in her 2007 memoir Spilling The Beans that their father was a brutal drunk who beat her and their mother Aileen, known as Molly, are ‘a total betrayal of a great man’.

At the age of 11, Wright was sent to The Convent of the Sacred Heart, a former independent school for girls in the coastal town of Hove in Sussex, and then to the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Woldingham, now known as Woldingham School. (The Hove school closed in 1966.) After school, Wright studied for the Bar at Gray's Inn, while pursuing a law degree at University College London.

At the age of 21, Dickson Wright passed her Bar exams and became England's youngest barrister. After her mother died of a heart attack in 1975, she inherited £2.8 million. Her mother's death, combined a few years later with her father's, left her in a deep depression, and she drank heavily for the following 12 years.