Hugh Grant has shed light on the reason why his family are so determined to keep him from making dinner. The British actor, famed for his roles in films like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Notting Hill, recently took up cooking for ‘the first time in 64 years’.
But this newfound passion quickly turned into a series of unfortunate events. Chatting with fellow actress Renée Zellweger and British Vogue, he admitted to giving his family ‘worms’ twice when dishing up undercooked chicken.
“It was dark, you see,” he explained. “It was on the barbecue and I stuck my Heston Blumenthal prod into it. I couldn’t quite read it. So I served it out – worms all round.”
While Hugh did not specify what illness his family contracted, trichinosis is a common infection resulting from eating undercooked meat. In its earliest stages, stomach pain, diarrhoea, tiredness and vomiting are among its common symptoms, but these typically worsen when the worms mate, birthing more larvae.
Left untreated, these larvae may then travel through the bloodstream and embed themselves into muscle tissue, causing a range of uncomfortable symptoms. These include joint pain, facial swelling, high fever, skin irritation, and pink eye.
In extreme but rare cases, trichinosis can lead to life-threatening complications such as brain swelling, lung inflammation, myocarditis, and meningitis. The latter refers to tissue which protects the spinal cord and brain.
Crucially, there have been ‘no human cases acquired from meat produced in the UK for over 30 years’, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. However, it is ‘one of the most widespread foodborne parasitic diseases’ in the European Union and there have been occasional UK cases in food sourced from abroad.
The Mayo Clinic in London explained: “Symptoms last for several months. But symptoms generally lessen when the larvae form cysts. Even after the infection is gone, fatigue, mild pain, weakness and diarrhoea may last for months or years.”
Actors Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger are both in the fourth Bridget Jones’s Diary movie
(Image: Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage)
Despite his cooking disaster, the actor confessed that he still ‘can’t stop barbecuing’ and continues to buy outdoor cooking equipment. For the colder months, he’s even invested in indoor tools like Le Creuset kitchenware, although his children constantly plead with him not to cook.
Hugh’s chat comes just weeks before the eagerly awaited sequel to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is set to light up cinemas on Valentine’s Day (February 14).
According to Cineworld, Hugh, who plays the charming Daniel Cleaver, has labelled the storyline as ‘very sad’, and ‘demanded that an accurate backstory between Bridget and Daniel be incorporated to preserve the emotional depth of the film’.