What do you give the cook who has everything? Why, obviously, the world's most expensive saucepan! Harrods will be selling them, though not until September, which gives everybody (especially those laggards who haven't got round to changing their euros back after the summer holidays) time to scrape together the £100,000. Yes, yes - rather steep for a pan, but it is made of gold and diamonds, which don't grow on trees yet. But will it improve one's egg-poaching skills? Or are we talking about superior, um... heat distribution, or anti-stickability in some as yet unguessable (by me) way? Has someone invented a pan that doesn't set all the fire alarms off while you're busy on the phone for a few short minutes? For a hundred grand I'm looking for a pan that can not only cook but take the beans out of the cupboard.
It's only a 10 minute stroll down from The Observer's offices to St John, the renowned offal, pig's ear and innards restaurant run by the estimable superchef Fergus Henderson, who has agreed to test-drive the new wonderpan - due from Harrods any minute. He too can only throw baffled conjectures at what thermo-molecular properties gold and diamonds might possibly confer upon a humble skillet. Whatever, I am already imagining Fergus with a medley of vital organs sizzling in it, even though he has his arm in a sling and is busy washing down painkillers with a mid-morning glass of Madeira when I arrive, having fallen off a wall and rolled down one of the steep hills that Gloucestershire is famous for. 'Broken collarbone,' he says.
Will he be able to lift a pan?
Yes, he has helpers. Which is just as well because when the pan turns up - accompanied by a lady from Harrods and a Herr Hub, who has flown in all the way from Germany with it - the gold alone weighs nearly a kilo, and that's just the handles, the rest being made of the stuff pans are usually made of, apart from the 200-plus diamonds of course.
So shall we get it out of the box? Shall we get cooking?
Well, says Herr Hub, we need to be careful. It's probably best not to use a gas flame. And we mustn't be too rough with it. He lifts it out with reverence, and sure enough it doesn't look like something you might obviously just pop into a hot oven, with its solid gold handles and clusters of diamonds on the lid and the panels adorned with the manufacturer's name - Fissler - makers of world-class cookware, Herr Hub says, for 160 years.
'You can cook with it, though?' I ask, wondering how it would look after a few rounds with a Brillo Pad...
Well you could, says Herr Hub. After all, the body is crafted of the finest stainless steel ('hygienical and long lasting!') and the best aluminium base. 'But,' he says, 'if you bought a pot for £100,000, would you like somebody scratching around inside your pan?'
I have to admit, I wouldn't.
Fergus looks disappointed. 'I suppose I thought the gold and diamonds might be of some beneficial, er... cooking purpose.'
For a long moment Herr Hub is genuinely lost for words. 'But what advantage could there be?' Which I suppose is what we were wondering to start with.
No, no, he goes on, 'the main purpose is pure luxury. It's more to be used for serving your guests. The people who buy things like this will probably not spend too much time in the kitchen.'
'But you could still put it in the oven...' Fergus is saying.
'Well, you could...' Herr Hub says, meaning that you probably wouldn't.
Off we go to the kitchen. Maybe we could warm something up gently in it - perhaps this new delicious wobbly stock that Fergus is selling. Suzanne, Fergus's right-hand chef, is on the case, and he is soon having his picture taken with the pan, which he thinks is 'possibly just the slightest bit bling'.
If Herr Hub knows what bling is, he's not saying, though with a bit of prompting he can imagine Michael Jackson or Elton John owning one of these superlative pans from Fissler, whose birthplace is Idar-Oberstein, a city world-famous also, he says, for its jewellery. He peers into the wobbly stock. 'Is this mushrooms?'
'Pigs' trotters,' says Fergus with some delight.
The lady from Harrods is telling me the pan is part of the store's forthcoming 'Timeless Luxury' range, which will also include Liz Hurley's safety pin dress and an ingenious spoon-cum-clothespeg by celebrated experimental chef Ferran Adrià that allows diners to eat one thing to the smell of another.
Who buys these expensive things?
'People with lots of income,' she says and tells us about the million-pound shoes they recently had at the store.
'Did anyone buy them?' asks Suzanne.
'Um. No.' They did, though, manage to sell a £70,000 fridge.
I tell her about Gordon Ramsay's half million pound kitchen. By now, though, most of us are wondering whether the £100,000 pan is something perhaps more suited to a successful footballer than a chef. Housewarming present for the Beckhams, anyone?
The Fissler diamond and gold limited edition pan is to order for £100,000 during Timeless Luxury at Harrods, 10 Sept-20 Oct(020 7730 1234).
