KEY POINTS:
The last time I saw English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on the telly, he was living the good organic life at River Cottage. I've always liked HFW, as we must call him so we don't get RSI, because unlike many TV chefs, he is self-effacing and wry, and he loves his small-hold animals to bits, even as he kills them to eat them. HFW particularly loves his healthy, free-range chooks, so his latest venture, Hugh's Chicken Run (TV One, Tuesdays), is a shocker.
Anyone who has seen footage of battery farms knows that the chickens bred for supermarkets have a rum life. But it's more gruesome and filthy than I'd ever imagined. Hugh's Chicken Run makes you emphatically wonder why anyone would eat a chook raised in these circumstances. (The reason is, they are super-cheap and the accountants love the huge turnover.)
In Britain, giant supermarket chains like Tesco - which take 1 ($2.50) from every 8 spent overall by consumers - offer the battery farmers and budget-conscious families an irresistible cheap-chook bargain.
Many people, as HFW illustrates, don't think about where their food comes from. This series could help the growing move to change that, in a less preachy way than Jamie Oliver's recent efforts.
As an experiment, HFW set up two chicken farms of his own in a single shed: one, a nice, uncrowded, free-range environment; next door, a regulation-abiding but overcrowded hell for thousands of chickens that swelled into plump freaks that could barely stand and sat around in their own stinking shit. How tempting is that as a food source?
HFW is going through hell himself on a daily basis as he must cull sick or injured birds, a neck-breaking chore which reduces him to tears. He also gave some free-range chooks to a group of people on a council estate in Axminster, with positive results. There is now a chook running around on their allotment called Whittingstall. It looks quite chirpy, unlike its human namesake in this series.
HFW's hair has always been of the dragged-backwards-through-the-hedge school, although his locks are more sedate in Chicken Run.
Marco Pierre White, on the other hand, definitely looks as if he's been fighting with the privet in Hell's Kitchen UK (TV One, Thursdays). Judging from the ancient blown-up photos of MPW hanging around the set, he has always regarded himself as a cool rock star of the kitchen and still does. In the series, he wraps a white cloth around his brow, which he no doubt thinks makes him a peer of Keith Richard. In reality, he looks like he's wearing a nappy on his head.
While MPW has a truly scary face and formidable reputation, he is generally quietly spoken and polite, referring to his teams as "boys" and "girls". Occasionally, he lets out a bellow, like an old bull about to charge. Women love him, apparently - last week's episode showed a comical montage of slow-mo MPW clips with a Barry White soundtrack. "The thinking woman's psychotic serial killer," as the commentary put it.
MPW is cunning, though. "Comedian" Jim Davidson, infamous for being homophobic and a misogynist, is on the "boys" team and has made no end of misery for team-mate Brian, who is gay. Jim has threatened to walk off the show at least five times and last week, after insulting Brian, brightened everyone's lives when they thought he was a goneburger. MPW called him into the office and fed him flattering bollocks, like, "You are a proper person, Jim". Awful Jim glowed and smirked, and marched back into the kitchen. One can only pray he will be culled very soon.
