The trouble with Jamie
I am, as you may know, a big fan of Jamie Oliver. When public opinion veered back in his direction after Jamie's Kitchen, the series about setting up his Fifteen restaurant and training urchins, I was already onside. But even the most hardened hater of his barrow-boy persona and now-curtailed use of the word "pukka" (oh, and by the way, he's not a "mockney", he was born and raised in Essex, where the people talk in a sort of extreme version of the East End accent - "mockney" is a fun word, but it never applied to Jamie Oliver) must admit he's trying to do some good with his millions and his reputation. School Dinners was a noble attempt to change public opinion and flick the nose of intransigent government. And Ministry Of Food is another game effort to make a difference, this time on a cash-strapped generation who can't cook.
But there's a fucking problem, and fuck me, it's his fucking swearing. From the first fucking line of the first fucking show, he was fucking swearing ("This is fucking Great Britain"), and the fucking swearing hasn't fucking stopped. He's up there in fucking Rotherham, trying to fucking get ordinary fucking people on poor fucking wages and fucking benefits to fucking knock up a fucking stir-fucking-fry, and it's no fucking picnic. Fucking hell, he's really fucking up against fucking it. I personally don't give a fuck whether he fucking swears or not, but a lot of other fucking people do, and it's a fucking complaint that fucking comes up again and a-fucking-gain. Why does he fucking swear so much? Firstly, because, I imagine, he fucking swears in real life, and this is fucking supposed to be a fucking documentary. Secondly, because he's a fucking duck out of fucking water up there in the fucking north, I fucking think he's fucking trying to ease into fucking working class life by showing that he's not a fucking ponce from the south, even though he fucking is - if anyone was unlucky enough to see the new, Lancashire-set Steve Coogan vehicle Sunshine last night, there was a scene in the pub where a TV weather forecast announced rain in London and a cheer went up. (He is a fucking millionaire, and one fucking woman has already fucking accused him of fucking "living in a bubble", but oddly fucking enough, she didn't say "fucking", as I guess she's fucking comfortable in her skin and might even fucking have the fucking decency to mind her language when the cameras are rolling.)
Anyway, it's not spoiling my enjoyment of the show, but it's putting a lot of other people off, and it's certainly not ideal for kids, who might get something out of it too. Hey, it's fucking in the can, it's not going to fucking change, but fuck me, it might be a bit of a fucking own goal. I still love him.*
*It's not unconditional love though. If the big supermarkets, like the one he works for and helps to greater profits, didn't secretly want people to buy "value-added" foods, ie. processed, because there's a greater return on things that have been industrially produced, maybe people would buy less crap and more whole ingredients. You know, the ones that supermarkets put at the front of the shop to show off about, but are only there to lure you into the more profitable aisles of things in boxes and cans and jars and sachets. The day Jamie Oliver stops taking the fucking Sainsbury's shilling will be a happy day indeed. Sorry, did I just swear?
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:04 AM
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29 Comments:
Did you see Mr Olive on Jonathan Ross the other week? I'm usually a fan, but he was such a miserable idiot on there that I really went off him. How anyone can appear on a show between David Lucas, David Walliams and Simon Pegg and then proceed to rant and preach at the (fucking) audience and host, while looking like he needed a good slap, is beyond me. His comments about his penis in a frozen pair of pants annoyed me too - it's like he's seen Gordon Ramsey and decided he needs to be a bit more controversial.
I did watch Sunshine last night. Difficult to know what to say about it. I'll definitely not be going back anyway.
Probably everything that happened in the show had an element of truth in it. But the show as a whole had no truth whatsoever. I didn't believe it.
I don't think this overly bothers (as opposed to Everly Brothers) programme makers these days. They'll say you don't have to believe it, it's entertainment. Sit back, be enchanted.
Now way I'm not that feckin daft.
**** me, that was a ****ing good piece about that ****ing Jamie ****ing Oliver. Maybe he's going to launch a range of mouthwash?
Is 'Sunshine' awful? I recorded it with high hopes - loved 'Early Doors'.
Quite agree re Jamie, I blame Gordon Ramsey - shame on them.
Davec
Right with you on this one Andrew. My children got a lot out of School Dinners and as I recall swearing was minimal. We were looking forward to watching this together but too much effing swearing. It's a real shame as eating habits are forged during childhood and I'm sure a lot of kids would benefit from watching this kind of TV.
I notice that More4 do a pre-watershed repeat, don't know if this is bleeped but if it is I reckon you could dance to it.
I don't care whether Oliver takes Sainsbury's shilling. or whether Davina McCall takes Loreal's or even if John Lydon takes Country Life's.
I haven't got time.
Heh, I didn't even really notice the swearing at all. Maybe that says something about me.
Good show though. Some of the most revealing bits are where he has to get the people with the money (the council) to support the project. It was the same with School Dinners.
It seems to be far easier to get ordinary people enthused about it than the people who have to juggle the budgets and weigh good food up against recycling collections...
"because there's a greater return on things that have been industrially produced"
So supermarkets take less profits on whole foods making them more affordable for all? How jolly spiffing of them.
Also the Jamie Oliver adverts do promote cooking from scratch almost as much as they promote Sainsbury's so I can see some moral justification for them (not that it's necessary)
Adam S
hey some of those green vegetable things can also be tres expensive, especially when they're out-of-season and flown from zimbabwe or a giant polytunnel in southern spain.
to be honest i didn't see the whole show but the salad he was making didn't impress a lot of them. wouldn't he be better off keeping it *real* and making them a nice scrag end of mutton stew? although the Italian peasant-style pasta went down well with the miner and his family. Hey up! Who knew there *were* still miners in britain. Actually going underground. That was the revelation for me.
As for Sunshine/Coogan. Embarrassing. All the best Steve Coogan characters take themselves completely seriously, have no idea that they are amusing. This guy was like the Colin the office prankster character from the fast show. cringeworthy.
Final jamie thought: cooking IS basically for girls - or that is how most of us males were brought up to think. Ramsey has macho-fied it with his sweary angry antics. Jamie is like the younger brother trying to copy off the cool older brother. Givin it maximum eff n jeffery.
I blame Ramsey for making post-watershed foodie TV fashionable.
I agree with your problems with the swearing but i'm sure, like me, you're secretly hoping for a new 9pm BBC show - Delia Unleashed.
I want to like Jamie, but as you say the programme is aimed at "a cash-strapped generation who can't cook", yet at the end of it Channel 4 advertise Jamie's new book to accompany the series, only 25 fucking pounds!!
"he was born and raised in Essex, where the people talk in a sort of extreme version of the East End accent"
And all people from Northampton make shoes?
Sorry, Mr Collins, but that claim is like saying that because someone was born and raised in England they must speak the same as a Derek Hatton! Just because some people in Essex talk that way, it does not mean everyone does.
Unfortunately when most people think of Essex they immediately think of places like Basildon and Billericay. And while those stereotypes are certainly true, they only represent the A13 and A217 corridors. Socially, if not geographically, places like Colchester are far removed from Canvey and owe more to East Anglia than the East End.
Oliver comes from a village in the district of Uttlesford. The north west corner of Essex bounded by Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. A rural and posh part of the county whose catchment is Cambridge rather than London.
The erosion of the traditional rural dialect in that area caused by transplants are from north London rather than east, and simply leads into a more generic urban accent than a Cockney-esque one.
Fair enough if you have no problem with his accent, or wish to defend it. Some people just naturally pick them up as they move around anyway. But Estuary English is not natural for people in the area where he was born and raised.
Fair enough, Michael, but are you saying that he puts the accent on?
To be honest I neither know nor care, but I am willing to give Jamie the benefit of the doubt. If his peer group spoke that way I can see him picking it up, and I believe he did go to college in London after all.
Despite growing up in the same town, my sister and I have different accents. Partly because she was much younger when we moved down south, so while I lost most of what I had, she had nothing to start with, but also the different schools we went to in the same town. Hers being a local secondary while mine was a Catholic one which took a more regional catchment from surrounding villages. (Not that I am a Catholic, mind, only that it was supposed to be a better school.)
I am sure you no one thought you had a Mr Bean-like voice until your started working with the bean shape headed postman from Time Gentleman Please. Accents or bean, these things can just rub off on you.
I'm sure he doesn't "put it on" consciously, some people just naturally absorb accents to fit in with the image they want to project. (Cf. Sheena Easton adopting an American accent within 5 minutes of getting off the plane from Lanarkshire.) That doesn't make it sound any less faintly ridiculous.
Oops, just accidentally rejected a comment by Five-Centres. Here it is.
I love Jamie Oliver. I think he's trying really hard to make a difference and it's working, so good for him.
Now I'm no prude, but, like Gordon Ramsay, his swearing is wearing. I mean for fuck's sake, it's part of my everyday language, but there is a cut-off point where it just becomes gratuitous.
Five-Centres
(whose blog has been revived and is now on bar-six.blogspot.com)
I don't mind Gordon Ramsay swearing. In fact, off the t of the h, it's about his only appealing attribute.
It's the fact the he (a soi-disant Scotsman) speaks in a plummy home counties accent that gets my goat. That and the fact that he used to play for Rangers.
Fuck me, that's a lot of fucking swears.
Yes, there is a shitload of awearing on Jamie's new show, and it is a bit off putting, but I'm prepared to put up with it as I do believe his heart is in the right place. There were a couple of times last night I felt really chuffed for Jamie. You could see it all coming together, and the glimmer of hope. He's a top man. Although if he starts taking the shilling of Top Man too, I'll be mightily hacked off.
with that small type at the bottom 'shilling' looked like 'shitting' to me af first! It shitting well did!
I strongly dislike Jamie Oliver because it's solely his fault that there's no more "My Parents Are Aliens", "Art Attack" or "How 2" ever being made again.
His Rotherham reality series is good though, and he was likeable on J.Ross a few weeks ago, especially in comparison to Lazy Comedy Slags Lucas & Walliams trying their best to recreate their infamous Dominik Diamond interview.
I think Jamie Oliver is fucking ace!
Too many people are telling us that nutrition is difficult. You need this or that superfood (goji berries, curly cale (wft?) etc) and this or that supplement, anti-oxidants, omega-3 etc etc. or you will live a miserable short life and die fat.
Jamie Oliver is a welcome change from that. He shows that cooking healthy food and eating a balanced diet isn't rocket science and doesn't need to cost a fortune.
Good on him!
Doughboy, you're right, some vegetables are more expensive, but that doesn't subtract from my original point: that Sainsbury's would go bust if you only bought fruit and veg from it. The real money is in industrially processed food - or bags of fruit and veg that have been cut up and prepared for you. They love it when you buy that! (Oh, and the fruit in supermarkets, which suspiciously appears all year round, tastes of nothing.)
Hello.
I don't give much of a toss about the swearing per se, but what I do find slightly uncomfortable is the way he is awkwardly dumbing down talking about food to the lads and lasses he's teaching. I've only seen the one, last night, but he was talking about some of the food last night with a sort of pastiche stupidity, which annoyed me.
Personally, I think he's a good guy. He's *personally* transforming the way we think about food in this country, with his unending energy and the money from his Sainburys commercials (well, some of it). It's not a bad legacy for a still young man, is it? Gordon Ramsey and his sneering arrogance with regard to the fact that Oliver's not a 4 star chef can stick his extremely expensive snob food somewhere appropriate. I'm getting a little bit bored with Mr Ramsey's ubiquitous face making more money for the family coffers, endorsing alcohol. Kitchen Nightmares may be his public service salve but it's not like he's not being paid for it, is it? Oliver gets paid similarly, but from his almost naive honesty about how he does things, we all know he basically plows all his money in to building up training facilities for youngsters all over the country (he remortgaged his house at one point, as I recall).
I think the schools food series was the making of him, myself. Before then I thought he was a cocky young edjit cooking typically a bit fashion conscious pasta dishes. you look at the difference between the pre-schools Jamie, and the post-schools purely cookery show he did last year -you've got a confident, self assured and incredibly informative, supportive screen chef, raving about growing lovely food at home, in to the bargain.
Like I say - I think he's being a little bit too self consciously patronising to the Rotherham locals. There again, it's a fucking forgiveable mistake, for fuck's sake.
@Chris
Oliver's book costs twenty-five pounds in the same way that Australian branded wine costs eight pounds in the supermarket. It is an artificially increased cover price to make it appear more of a bargain when it is sold at half (ie. actual) price. Go to Waterstones and see what price the book is actually selling for.
I did not notice Oliver's swearing at all which suggests that it is at least naturalistic, unlike Ramsay's pantomime act.
I came to the comments section to take issue with your comments about Essex accents, but someone's made a much better job of it than I would have.
Round my way, there's still some people who speak with a proper Essex accent and they sound nuffin like Oliver, whose accent is currently one of very few aggravating things about him.
Actually, even Waterstones at £12.50 are being undercut by Tesco, they've got it for a tenner.
Regarding the book price tangent: those inflated prices still apply to independent booksellers, unable to use commercial muscle to squeeze the deals out of the publishers. This entertaining South London Bookshop blog makes the point.
Regardless of anything else he's a shite drummer & a bit lardy to boot. Maybe he should practice what he preaches. As for the swearing, well what a fucking disgrace! These southerners coming up here trying to extend our lives, the cheeky bastards!
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