KEY POINTS:
Has anyone ever cooked anything they saw anyone cook on a cooking show? And if, as I suspect, the answer is no, why are there so many of the damn things?
I like cooking. I've got a lot of cook books, some of them are written (possibly) by the cooks on some of those telly shows nobody has ever cooked a thing from.
This is rather the point of cooking shows. See Nigella, Rick, Jamie et al ponce about in their designer kitchens so as to sell their books about cooking.
Why can't I have a cooking show? Even Gordon Ramsay's wife has one now. Just because she's married to him, is very nice and cooks a bit. I could be nice. I can cook. I once got asked to contribute a recipe to some charity cookbook. I forgot. But I could do it. Really I could, if someone reminded me.
I wouldn't mind my show being on at, say, 3am. Which is when Nigella, a dog's dinner of a thing, should run. The show has been long since abandoned - except on cable where such things go when they die - because is about as appetising as cooking up a rugby player's socks for tea.
In Nigella, Nigella has guests over and fails to get any rapport going while she fails to interview them. Then she cooks something and they have to eat it. The one I saw had her wearing one of her little cardies. I'm more interested in her cardies than I am in her cooking (although her books are fabulous), because they seem to be the amazing shrinking cardies. They get ever smaller. Unless she is getting ever bigger. This would be nice but it is unlikely.
Her previous cooking shows have relied on her seducing the camera, which means seducing the viewer by licking spoons and fluttering her eyelashes. This doesn't work so well with either her guests or the studio audience. There is a section on gadgets. These are not even cooking gadgets but madly stupid, useless things like a robot that delivers drinks and an electric fly swat. It may be the worst bit of television made, ever. For that reason it is the best cooking show on television.
Jo Seagar, the easy peasy cook, has a new show based on her moving to Oxford, in Canterbury, where she has set up a school and a cafe - "this is the cafe ... and this is the beautiful homewares andkitchen store ... " where there are lots of tempting things she knows you'll just want to buy.
Jo appears wearing what looks like a builder's apron which is just as well because she does rather fling stuff about. "Whoops! We'll try not to wear it all!"
It's quite exciting watching - in the way that watching a pot of potatoes come to the boil can be exciting - because there is always the chance that one day she really will forget where she put that chop. "Where's the lamb? In the oven. Oop, can't even get the oven door open."
At least you could actually cook one of her recipes even if some of the instructions are a bit barmy. "Then we'll pop that - ow! - on the plate."
Her golden lab wandered into the kitchen: "That's Tosh. We were going to have two dogs, Mac and Tosh, but we've only got Tosh."
That's rather asking for it. Still, I'd rather have dinner, any night, with Miss Easy Peasy in her peculiar apron than Nigella in her intimidating cardies.
"Hey!" as Jo likes to say, I could show her my recipe.
