In the Sunday Times Kultur section (thank you the Maffins for the new batch) AA Gill is bemoaning the fact that television is riddled with cookery programmes: “The specialist Good Food Channel must be furious that all the big terrestrial stations seem to be eating its breakfast. I haven’t added up how much television is spent in the kitchen but I bet it’s more than we spend actually eating each week.” There are not just cookery programmes but food related reality shows. He should come to Greece (except that he hates Greece having evidently at some time or other had a bad experience here) where you’re bound any night at any time to find at least one channel airing a cookery programme. Is it all Jamie’s fault do you suppose? Is it the reason for the growing problem of obesity in the western world?
I believe I mentioned once before that, no longer taking The Sunday Times, apart from Mr. AA Gill, I really miss India Knight and I more than likely said I had found a replacement in the writing of Jan Moir in The Daily Mail. Here is a recent section “The National Television Awards. Otherwise known as the graveyard of good taste, the place where bad frocks go to die. Every year it’s the same eye-watering spectacle; a parade of lovely and talented women clattering off the cliff of No-Hope like spangled lemmings in their stretch sateens and unsuitable shoes. It’s as if they’re gripped by a collective annual madness; knocking each other down in a hormonal stampede for the gaudiest fabrics in the most unflattering shades, run up into ill-fitting designs by a blindfolded Catweazle moonlighting as a machinist in the Coronation Street knicker factory.” Don’t you just love it? She goes on to name names and give examples and then continues with, “And if this isn’t bad enough can I just have a quick word with all our adorable pregnant red carpet stars. Holly Willoughby, Myleene Klass, Emma Bunton -please stop posing with a hand on your stomach and an expression that says ‘Whoopsie! Look what I’ve gone and done. You all look as if you’re auditioning for a part in Carry On Up The Duff.
It’s reductive and appalling. Not to mention really really annoying.”
The lady should really really have a one woman comedy show. If she could perform as she writes she would go down a treat. Maybe she, together with India and AA, could write a comedy routine that would knock their socks off and simply wow them in the aisles.
What more can I say?
Jan Moir