Interestment’s Top Four: Cookery Shows
Someone won’t be smiling when they see the list…
Once upon a time, mainly before you were born, cookery shows featured haunted women weeping to camera about how best to scramble eggs to stop the babies from crying. These broadcasts were often interrupted by air raid sirens, or sudden cuts to Artie Shaw playing his magnificent clarinet to distract everyone from the sounds of gunfire and Nazi war accents. Terrible, terrible days. But then along came Jamie Oliver, and everyone started smiling again! Even so, poor Jamie didn’t make the cut, and our top four cookery shows read like this…
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1. A Cook’s Tour
Literally, there isn’t a chef on the planet as cool as Anthony Bourdain from New Yoik. He spends the entire programme strutting around former war zones in a Ramones t-shirt, never without a cigarette, demanding that the locals surprise him with their food. And they do. Amongst the treats is a beating cobra’s heart, and some very penis-looking objects. By all accounts, he’s a pretty decent chef as well.
2. Come Dine With Me
The future of reality television during the recession – this excellent TV show proves, weirdly, that there is nothing more entertaining than watching four strangers desperately attempting not to enjoy one another’s food. Competitive dinner parties are definitely the way forward.
3. Masterchef
The only cookery show likely to make you weep, it’s like the X Factor, but without the mentally ill people. None of them can ever quite handle the professional kitchen, and to win Greg over, you’ve just got to bake a great big cake. And yet, it’s totally addictive. Below is a bit of classic Reeves and Mortimer.
4. Floyd on Anything
He started with Floyd on Fish in 1984, and finished with Floyd’s India in 2001. That’s when all the younger, hipper chefs came along, with their sneakers, and slap dash cooking techniques – just chunk it off! Zap it in a blaster! Tear it up! etc… But Floyd is still the best. After all, is listening to Jamie Oliver berate the government honestly more enticing than the sight of a drunk man attempting a stew? Exactly. Below is his advert for Kiwi fruit.
ah yes, Come Dine With Me is my guilty pleasure. It’s the sneaking around their houses I like too.
Celebrity Come Dine with Me featured the televisual gold that was So Solid “Love Rat, Alisha betrayer and boyfriend of half-man half-horse Javine” Harvey, teaching Tamara Twatworth how to talk street. I had to turn it over as he described how he called his friends “bloods”.
Good list. I made scrambled eggs today but I usually do them poached.
anthony bourdain is a legend… unlike the self proclaimed best thing since to happen to food Marco Pierre white and his secret Knorr ingredient… dirt.
Sweet love of God how did I miss this? It may have been before I was introduced to this wonderful site.
THIS IS TRUTH INTERESTMENT.
Bourdain is by far the BEST chef in the world.