Start your week with a wacko!

"Signora Girardelli, the nineteenth century celebrity cook, held center stage with an act pitched somewhere between Delia Smith and the Marquis de Sade. Staples of her cookery 'act' included running a red hot poker over her limbs, frying eggs in boiling cooking oil cupped in her hands, and climbing inside a huge blazing oven to keep an eye on her baking. Signora Girardelli first arrived in England in 1814 claiming to have royal patronage, and made her debut in London billed as "The Great Phenomenon of Nature." She out boiling lead in her mouth, walked barefoot on hot irons and passed the poker over various parts of her body, then had a mouthwash of boiling oil."

yay Sideshow!

From the usual source, Oddballs and Eccentrics, K. Shaw, all copyright K Shaw.