Another Aga saga

The world's best stove is no longer politically correct



It began when the gas bill landed on the mat. “This is outrageous,” my husband James yelled. “There’s no way we can afford this.” The bill in question covered seven weeks between January and February this year. It came to £682.30.

Given we’d been on holiday for one of those weeks, the figure was shocking. James had no doubt where the blame lay. “It’s your Aga,” he declared. “It’s got to go.”

We’d huddled round it through out the miserable winter, we’d eaten endless warming casseroles slow-cooked in its bottom oven. The prospect of losing our Aga was devastating.

I hadn’t always been an Aga aficionado. I regarded them as status symbols that people pretentiously described as “best friends”. They were the toys of Marie-Antoinettish pseuds who wanted to play at living in a farmhouse in Wales – when actually they were hedge fund managers from Notting Hill. Madonna and Guy Ritchie had one, just as they donned Hunter wellies and Barbours and claimed to love hunting and fishing. (Now I wonder if maybe they divorced after a row over the gas bill.)

Then four years ago we bought a house with an Aga in situ.

I was so scared of the lump of iron that for weeks we lived off microwave meals. Finally I bought an Aga guide book and discovered that Agas were actually far easier to use than conventional cookers. Not only that but everything that came out of it was utterly delectable. The deep, thick walls of the double ovens produced an incredibly unctuous chicken and spinach curry, and a roast lamb so tender the meat fell off the bones.

And so a great and unexpected love affair began. Like any converts, we were evangelical. “It’s marvellous,” we bored our friends. “If you want to roast a chicken, just shove it in the top oven and an hour later it’s done. Its jacket potatoes are so fluffy and the toast is sublime.”

Only one dared to actually voice the truth. “Heavens you’re smug,” she said after I’d launched into a reborn-Nigella eulogy to drop scones made on the hot plate.

Most, however, simply looked sceptical. “But how does it work?” they’d ask. “Surely, it can’t be turned on all the time?”

James and I would eye each other guiltily. “Well, yes. It is. But that’s great! It means you can pull a pizza out of the freezer at 3AM and it’ll be ready in minutes, with such a crispy base ...”

Our friends had spotted the glaring design flaw. When David Cameron excused the Aga in his constituency home by saying he only turned it on when he was there, it made me doubt his fitness to lead the country. Because Agas only work properly if they’re turned on all the time. All day, all night, all year round. When we’re on holiday, or at the height of summer (which fortunately has lasted for just two days in recent years) the Aga continually radiates useless heat. As gas prices soar, we’re literally burning money.

Still, we continued to find get-outs. We work at home and use the Aga on and off all day, so we were using it at full capacity. But more and more, unease tempered my enjoyment of my juicy venison casseroles. Last year environmentalist George Monbiot launched a crusade against middle-class Aga owners. “I’ve lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible – perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen – with a green lifestyle,” he said.

The annual carbon footprint of my two-oven gas Aga is four tons, I discovered, two thirds of what an entire average British home emits in a year, a whole ton more than government targets for individual houses by 2020. In this light, my sneering at my neighbours for driving 4x4s, my rubbishing patio heaters and my obsessive recycling of the insides of loo rolls seemed deeply ironic.

Tessa Glass, a mother of two, who has an Aga in her second home (another eco crime) in Sussex refuses to believe she is an Aga lout, wilfully helping sea levels rise, all so she can scoff perfect Yorkshire puddings.

“But Aga owners are green,” she protests. “They’re the kind of people who love the country and have dogs. Apart from the footballers’ wives, that is.” She’s taken aback when I explain that flying to New York twice a year would cause less devastation to the rain forests. “La la la, not listening,” she cries.

Not listening, indeed. The list of celebrity Aga owners who also profess to be eco warriors makes hilarious reading. Sting and Trudie Styler lecture us about the Amazon but – natch – they own one. Prince Charles is forever warning us of climate Armageddon but his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, “wouldn’t cook on anything else.”

Colin Firth, whose wife runs a chichi “green” store is another fan. Not so much hypocritical as puzzling is Sharon Stone’s avowal that an Aga is the first thing she would save in a fire, though the lightest model weighs 64 stone [900lb].

I’ve been doing everything I can to offset my Aga’s footprint. I never drive and we have no separate kettle or toaster and no tumble dryer, meaning, as one school-mum friend cheerily pointed out: “whenever I walk past your house I can see your wet knickers on the cooker.”

We’re not the only ones to be having second thoughts. Last week Aga announced annual profits had dropped by 97 per cent, from £14.4 million to £500,000 (although sales levelled out in the second half of the year).

After the gas bill shocker, our Aga is a seriously endangered species – like a Giant Panda. I frantically investigated ways to preserve it. I looked into installing AIMS, Aga’s new “intelligent management” system, which effectively makes the cooker heat up only when you need it. But the price for conversion was around £2000 (now on sale at a still pricey £1200), the price of a decent range cooker.

I remembered the freezing weekend the Aga broke and I had to survive two days with no heat in the kitchen, making coffee in the microwave, before forking out £400 for an emergency call out. Servicing the beast costs around £150 a year.

Despite this, I couldn’t bear to let go. Mary Berry, author of dozens of Aga cook books, sympathises. “I know of so many husbands who say 'Good God, this is costing a lot of money’ but our house would be unhappy without it. It’s at the hub of the home: our children did their homework by it, my husband dries the dogs on it, I’ve just washed a jumper and folded it on one of the lids so it won’t need ironing. I don’t want to have Botox or my varicose veins sorted so why not allow myself this luxury.”

Inspired by Berry, I upped my campaign. There were other reasons for the monster bill: it’s been the coldest winter in 25 years, we live in a big, draughty Victorian house and working from home means the heating is almost always on. Mercifully, a heating engineer confirmed this. He calculated our Aga is costing us around £14 a week and our lack of room thermostats was a bigger culprit. “People spend £50 a month on cable television,” I begged James. “I’ll forsake America’s Next Top Model for life in return for the Aga.”

So our Aga is reprieved. But I fear the stay is temporary. It’s like living with an errant husband, turning a blind eye to his obvious flaws, because I can’t imagine life without him. But at least there’ll still be drop scones for tea.

Source. (NOTE: I reported another Aga saga in January)