Catherine Tate - The Aga Saga mother

The character of the Aga Saga woman makes fun of  the stereotype of the pretentious middle classes having an Aga oven at home. An Aga saga is a type of popular novel, set in middle England and populated by the middle classes of the sort that typically own Aga cookers. Agas are kitchen ranges, often very large and expensive, that are seen as epitomizing the prosperous and cosy middle-class English country lifestyle.

The Catherine Tate Show - The Aga Saga woman

An Aga Saga is a kind of novel about the lives of middle-class women living in British country villages. The name comes from Aga, a type of oven that these women would typically own.

Catherine Tate plays Mrs Montgomery, an upper class English woman who goes into a state of shock in various, seemingly harmless, situations. For example, in Series 1 she receives a phone call from her husband's business associate and has to tell her children that "daddy hasn't been able to find any good brie" on his business trip to France. They fear that the other children will make fun of them at the Parisian picnic at school because they don't have the right cheese.

In Series 2, the Aga Saga woman goes into a state of shocked terror when a Northern nanny has to look after her children. She does forewarn the children that the agency arranged for a temporary nanny (as Alice was ill), and that she feared that the nanny may come from as far north as Sunderland.

A Geordie is a person from Newcastle in the north of the UK.

A standard Aga oven