"Chase," I would reply before declaring that there was an American actor called Chevy Chase and he must have been pretty good at his craft because they named a car after him.
That's when I would hear the call for "security!" and marched from the studio arena back to the kitchen.
On the way out I would cry that I wasn't sure, however, what aisle number it was … possibly four?
Just down from the one with the dunny paper and tissues.
"Security!"
But anyway, where was I?
Oh yes, I was in the lav and the phone went.
No hang on, that's another story.
I was (on this missive occasion) in the kitchen making tea.
When I say "making" tea I was basically heating things up and trying to decide whether to use a splash of lemon pepper or turmeric to give the simmering rice stuff a bit of a hurry up.
I quite enjoy kitchening, in the cooking sense of slaughtering ingredients and whipping mixing bowls to their limits.
All in the name of creating something to eat because that's important.
For if you don't eat you don't … so anyway, yeah, the kitchening adventures which (as a boring old stickler for deadlines) I embark upon at 5pm.
Why?
Because it is a sensible time to embark on a stove-searing mission that needs to be wrapped up by 6pm as that's when the news comes on, which, bearing lap-warming plates, we can watch and wonder …a bout what the hell had I done to the chicken thighs?
So yes, it is all about an hour's mission of preparation, quick snort of lager to get the culinary creative juices flowing, assign the appropriate heating element to its task, and it's on.
As is that rather addictive television ingredient, The Chase.
Right on 5pm.
My set-off time.
A time to follow the recipe rules and not be distracted.
But I am easily distracted … I'll fess up to that straight away.
It's like back in my early journalistic days when I had a feature to get finished by 4pm for the Saturday edition and some turkey goes and declares that there's a shout on over at the Cri' and the bar tab's on the house from 3.
I was quite a regular recipient of calls from my editors the following morning whose questions were effectively "Well … what's the story … or more to the point where's the story?"
So when I hear dear Bradley Walsh utter those great words "for you, the chase is on" I am caught in two worlds.
I have worn a track from the kitchen to the lounge where I can peer around the corner at the telly.
I drop things and I forget things when I am facing the Dark Destroyer or the Governess.
Basically, by about 5.27pm I have incinerated the finely sliced red-onion pieces because Bradley declared excitedly that the participant before him was "just one answer away from forty thousand pounds".
"He's got to get this," I declare, whilst announcing that I'll have every shot at it also.
"You might get it," my wife said on one occasion.
"But you might have to get the fire brigade first."
Oh the steaming smoke from overheated canola oil.
And making mashed spuds … but forgetting to put the spuds in as there were questions flying like salt and pepper and needed to be addressed.
Got to get things right. • Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off centre
