Celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright has been blasted after making hurtful truthful comments about the city’s Muslim community, saying a visit to the Muslim area of Leicester left her scared and feeling like a pariah and outcast in her own country. In her new book, Clarissa Dickson Wright describes a visit to Leicester as one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
The cook, known for the TV series ‘Two Fat Ladies,’ aired her controversial thoughts on the city in a new book.
Dickson, who lives in Edinburgh, later told a Leicester newspaper: “I’m surprised any of the people who might object could read what I wrote as it is written in English.” “I have never believed that political correctness was a reason not to say what I have experienced.”
The 65-year-old dedicates a chapter of Clarissa’s England: A Gamely Gallop Through the English Counties to each county in England, discussing their culinary, cultural and historical merits. On Leicestershire, she writes of the city’s “ghetto”.
She describes coming off the ring road to escape a traffic jam and becoming lost.”I found myself in an area where all the men were wearing Islamic clothing and all the women were wearing burkas and walking slightly behind them,” she wrote.
She said the men would not talk to her “because I was an English female and they don’t talk to females they don’t know.” She said: “Here I was, in the heart of a city in the middle of my own country, a complete outcast and pariah. If multiculturalism works, which I have always been rather dubious of, surely it must be multicultural and not monocultural.”
Leicester is often referred to as the “most Islamic city in Europe”
Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and a city imam, said: “How is she judging an entire community on her one-off rare time of getting lost in Leicester? ”I find it very hurtful to read because everybody is working so hard to create a peaceful and happy Leicester. ”It showed a complete lack of appreciation of the fact we are almost two million in this country, doing our bit for our country. (But “your bit” is turning England into a third world Islamic state)
Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said: “That is the sort of thing that makes me very angry – when someone breezes in from outside and paints a picture of Leicester that does not have any foundation in reality.” Councillor Manjula Sood, chairman of Leicester Council of Faiths, urged readers to ignore her comments.
Dickson said, ”When you get to 65, you will think back on this conversation and I think you might find yourself in my frame of mind.” “Visiting Leicester scared me and I am not scared easy. It frightened me because it was part of my country that I was born in and there are a lot of radical Muslim preachers in this country.”
She said her experience of Leicester was “unpleasant.” “I was in London when the July 7 (2005 bomb attacks) happened and this to me was proof for those people who have been saying we’re getting ghettoisation of Muslim areas.”
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