Back in the day, TV chefs did the uncomplicated job of encouraging and/or irritating people into cooking. There was little machismo or ego involved. Delia, for all her faults, was calm, good at her job, and didn't want to cause controversy. Now she's binned the past ten years of progress in the British diet by announcing that we should actually all be spending as little time as possible cooking and eating pre-prepared frozen foods. Why? It seems that somewhere in the past few years, aided and abbeted by such titanic egos as Ramsay and Bourdain, TV executives decided that food programming needed a longer cock.
Take the new masterchef: Gregg Wallace, a man who can only shout, spends his time impolitely slating food he a) couldn't touch himself, and b) doesn't seem to understand, while Michel Roux Jr, a man of immense taste and talent, intimidates the contestants by looking like he's about to knife them. Lovely old Lloyd Grossman (who now apparently has had a robot made in his likeness, which soullessly appears in 'Step up to the Plate' on the bbc) hosted the program calmly and intelligently in its original format, and gave a great commentary on the dishes made. Guest chefs and critics were more constructive than damning, and the competitive nature of the program took a back seat. It was a vastly more heartening and inspiring program to watch, and it didn't make you wince.
Car crash TV has now fully taken cookery programming under its scaly wing, and the list of luminaries who I will never have the same respect for is getting longer and longer by the day. Raymond Blanc is trying to be Alan Sugar! Why?
The worst thing is that all of the new breed TV programs are so compulsive to watch. Kind of like porn, only you end up feeling less sullied with porn. Example: I got immersed in this years Great British Menu, and enjoyed every episode, but ended up thinking it was deeply embarrassing for British fine dining, and for our food culture in general. The show asked some of our most talented chefs to come up with dishes that big-up modern British cooking, to be served at a celebratory, celebrity riddled, dinner at the culmination of the series. The format was all about the competition, and was full of depressing in-it-to-win-it interviews with the chefs. Some of the dishes were amazing, and some of the chefs, remarkably, came across as real people. Unfortunately, many of their dishes were faulty, and were torn apart publicly by the judges (especially by that Oliver 'I just don't like fish and meat together' Peyton). This can't have been good for their self esteem, nor for the self esteem of British cuisine. In fact, GBM begged the question: Is there any other country in the world that lacks as much confidence in its food culture as ours? The best British restaurants are already world famous, and have been for years. What do we need to prove? British food is good, and our restaurants are great. Le Gavroche, The Three Chimneys, The Merchant House (RIP), l'Enclume, The Fat Duck. End of argument. But no, we needed to show off our abilities in the name of TV, so we demonstrate that we can be modern and clever in the kitchen by showing flaws in loads of our most professional chefs dishes, and then forcing Pierre Gagnaire and Thomas Keller to rub shoulders with Ronnie Corbett and a bunch of Footballers wives at the 'illustrious' final dinner. Great!
Call me soft, but I'd like food television to return to bumbling old drunk fools and snobbish fat women showing you how to use your kitchen properly. I'd find it less embarrassing to watch a naked episode of the two fat ladies than watch any more esteemed chefs go up the cack pipe of TV.
Thankfully, Clarry and Jenny always did their program clothed.
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