Food The Grumpy Guide To

Remember when your hot meal was a soggy school dinner,

an overcooked roast at the local carvery

or a charred treat in the all new burger bar?

Well, they tell us that British cuisine has improved,

so why do we now suffer from food fury and gastronomic grumpiness?

A timbale of rice.

In a mung bean reduction with a wallaby jus.

What a load of pretentious bollocks.

Everyone seems obsessed with what they put down their gullet.

Worrying about the airmiles it's travelled,

or trying to grow it themselves in some green-fingered Good Life fantasy world.

It's insane. You know, why are we eating any of this at all?

Meanwhile, our telly diet is marinaded in celebrity chefs,

and the local greengrocer has been expertly stuffed by a huge supermarket.

If you get something like a chicken Kiev,

it should just say "salt, with some chicken Kiev."

We've gone from powdered egg to bloody goji berries, whatever they are.

How come stuff that's supposed to be good for you is horrible?

It's time for us Grumpies to lift the lid and let off steam.

Do I have an educated palate?

Yes, it's been educated to chips and fish fingers and fried eggs.

Love a bit of food, me.

I'm lucky, because I can eat and eat and not put a pound on.

I put it down to a high metabolism.

I've eaten some odd things in my time.

I've eaten a goat's testicle,

I've eaten a rat curry, I've eaten a dried fish on a stick.

Fussiness was not an option. It was, food down,

if you don't want to eat it, don't.

It'll go in the bin. Go hungry. See you tomorrow, end of.

My wife has educated me quite a great deal

in the ways of the gourmand

but I'm pretty simple. I don't really like veg.

That'll be the first thing I say, I'm not a vegetarian.

-Here we are.

-Mmmm, wonderful.

I think I have an educated palate.

That's not to say I'm easily fooled by fancy-schmancy,

"oh, look, there's a tiny bit of food on this big plate"

and it's sky high and you're meant to think it's delicious. I know what's delicious.

When did strolling the supermarket aisle

become more like walking a fashion catwalk?

Everything that we digest these days seems to be dictated to us

by groups of food fashionistas and culinary snobs.

When things become fashionable and people tell you,

"you don't want that, you want this."

I go, "No, I want that."

"But it's what everyone's having." I think, "so what?"

With clothes, OK, but not food.

What I like is what I like. It still tastes good.

Food and fashion statements.

It's an ongoing thing, isn't it, you know?

Nouvelle cuisine, gastro pubs, fancy beans,

I remember when someone said to me once, "do you eat mung beans?"

and I thought they'd insulted me.

There's trendy vegetables, chic sushi, hip and happening tomatoes.

It's enough to make our blood boil.

What is the difference between sun-dried and sun-blushed?

Bugger all, as far as I can see.

Dried tomatoes, blushed tomatoes, embarrassed tomatoes,

various kinds of tomatoes are out there.

A tomato is a tomato, sun-dried or sun-blushed or plum or...

it's a tomato.

And the flowery poncey lingo they use

to supposedly tease our taste buds

means we need a translator on hand just to order the simplest of meals.

Scallops on a bed of horseradish mash, know what I mean?

Medallions of sca... Why do you need to call a scallop a medallion?

A melange of beef.

Is that a burger?

-It's a scallop, it doesn't need embellishment.

-A timbale of rice.

A timbale? Why not have, you know, a conga of peas?

And a bass drum of baked potatoes, while you're at it.

In a mung bean reduction with a wallaby jus.

A ceviche of salmon with a panache of seasonal vegetables

on a nest of salsify.

I thought "What is that? A ceviche?"

What's a ceviche of salmon? A panache of vegetables?

Why don't they just get Vic Reeves to write the menus for them?

It would be like, "An eranu of beef that's been hoisted on a winch,

"served on a nest of cat hair parsnips and an uvavu of red wine.

-"Uuuvaavuu."

-RUBS THIGHS

-Now, you see what Jerry's done here.

-Yes?

He's fried your eggs on both sides.

-Are you sure I can't drizzle some balsamic vinegar on that?

-Please don't.

Only in restaurants is the word "drizzle" considered classy.

I think that's a curious thing. Drizzle is a negative thing.

I don't know why, when we apply it to food,

it's "Oh, the oil has been drizzled on, that's nice.

"I'd hate to think of it being poured or dropped, but drizzled, mmm".

What a load of pretentious bollocks.

They say less is more,

and in restaurant terms they could just be right.

It seems the more you pay out, the less you actually get.

I like a nice medium-sized dish but no, these tiny little...

No. There's no point in that, I know it looks lovely

and it does taste lovely but I want to taste it more than once.

I want to go, "mmm taste, mmm taste, mmm taste, mmm taste,

"maybe taste again". Then I'm done. I don't just want, "mmm taste".

I had this posh meal, it sounded amazing, it came out, it was

a piece of salmon with a bit of sauce on it, one asparagus!

One asparagus!

The one modern food I cannot entertain is sushi.

There's nothing there, people go nuts for it.

They go "Oh, got to have some sushi, shall we have sushi for lunch, do you like sushi?"

No, I don't, cos there's nothing there.

It's a little bit of uncooked fish and a little bit of rice.

And the rest of it is plastic. You throw away more than you eat.

-This is a stack with smoked salmon, cream cheese...

-Is that free?

..prawn in a shell. No, it's only £12.50.

-£12.50 for that!

-In a restaurant it would be £25.

There's nothing that winds me up more than asking for a portion of chips.

Easy request, really, isn't it? Portion of chips.

And getting on a plate, six big, thick bits of potato, like that.

That's me, that's the night over.

I might as well just get my coat. That's it, I've had enough.

For a long time, I used to go to restaurants

and there was a lot of something called polenta.

Now polenta is clearly a building material

that somewhere in the EU, they suddenly found.

It must have been a residue. It must have been something

that was left over after they'd made something else.

I asked for, I want, a plate of chips. That's not a plate of chips. A, it's not a chip.

When does a potato become a chip? There has to be size regulations.

For me a chip has a definite size.

It's crunchy, you pick it up in your fingers.

That's huge, you need a knife and fork. Not a chip.

It's funny how tastes change in different regions.

In the Midlands, they seem to want chips with everything.

A lot of people have lasagne and chips,

or they'll have moussaka and chips.

You'd think pasta, that's the carbs. You don't need...

I was in Wolverhampton on tour last year.

I went into a place and ordered a baked potato,

and honest to God, this girl asked, "Do you want chips with that?".

It was on every menu for a while. You couldn't move for polenta.

I think we used it up. It seems to have gone.

We've had our fill of small portions of culinary snobbery.

But the quick and easy ready meal isn't a palette pleaser either.

Packed with preservatives, e-numbers and fake flavouring,

over-packaged, clingfilmed,

and presented with a glossy appetising picture

that bears no resemblance to the gloop on your plate.

Ready meals are a very odd thing, really.

If you do get something like a chicken Kiev,

it should just say, "salt with some chicken Kiev".

It's been proven over and over again,

TV chefs and non-TV chefs alike will show you how to make that meal,

probably as quickly as 40 minutes in the oven.

Why not make it yourself and know what's in it?

12 o'clock at night after a few lagers,

chuck it in the microwave for two minutes.

We can all fall foul of chicken.

They drag all the goodness out of it, try to make it look pretty by processing it

and then put it all back in with non natural vitamins and minerals etc.

I'm constantly disappointed with the picture on the front of the ready meal

and actually what is in the plastic tray.

Immediately you feel like you're in prison, you take the thing off

and basically, you've got a prison tray in front of you, haven't you?

My rule of thumb is,

if the ready meal comes in a cardboard box, then it's fine.

If it's packaged with a nice cardboard box

with a nice picture on it

and if the cardboard box is not dyed,

if it's natural cardboard, then it's fine.

You poke your fork through, you put it in the microwave,

take it out a few minutes later

and there's a smell of wet dog in the kitchen.

What is that smell? What is that smell of wet dog?

And there, it's your beef casserole.

I do like dirty food though, I mean, I'm a keen cook,

but there are certain, there's filthy food that I love,

but it loses its magic when you get older, like the Campbell's meatball,

I remember loving them as a child, dare I say it, on a bed of rice.

There are good ready meals, there are bad ready meals.

But you can go to someone's house

who's spent all day putting it together -

could still be horrible, can't it?

You know, the dinner parties you've been to, where someone says

"for the starter I've got some slices of organic beetroot

"with some snail porridge on and a little tuft of lemon grass".

That sounds horrible.

Do you have any Fray Bentos pies?

You know, it is amazing, what you can come up with with just flour and water.

Yeah, glue.

And, sometimes, to wait the seconds it takes to microwave convenience food

is itself too much of an inconvenience.

I love eating fish and chips and stuff like that.

I don't like all the Burger King things. I do sort of think...

But it's very hard to keep kids off that.

They know what they're doing.

"Come to McDonalds, we've got lettuce in our burgers now,

"so if you want to be an athlete then eat McDonalds".

I happen to think KFC is the food of the gods.

To me it is the nectar that keeps me going.

If I know that there's a motorway service station where the first one

is, like, not KFC and the next one is,

I will drive, literally, that extra mile, for the Colonel.

Richard Dawkins has said there's no such thing as God,

but he hasn't tried KFC gravy. That's the work of the gods.

Not meaning to be cruel to the people of Wolverhampton,

but eating out in Wolverhampton is really crap.

And I got laughed in the face in the street

when I asked someone if there is a Wagamamas in Wolverhampton,

and they just went, "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

"No mate, no, you've got to go to Birmingham for that".

Having been brought up in Scotland,

I do feel a slight sense of injustice

that after centuries of

extraordinary medical prowess from the Scots,

extraordinary engineering innovation from the Scots -

inventing penicillin, the telephone, television,

suddenly the reputation has been reduced to that of,

that's where you get deep-fried Mars Bars from.

Only in Scotland can they make focaccia sound like a swear word.

Seriously. "foc-accia".

And after a few jars the calling for animal fat becomes

impossible to ignore.

Why is it that a kebab tastes so much better at 3am?

I was in Scotland recently, doing some gigs up there

and I went into a kebab shop.

Now, the Scottish are perhaps known not for their best diet,

hence the deep-fried black pudding and deep-fried Mars Bar,

but me with a London accent said, "I'll have a kebab, please".

-Hi, sir.

-Hello, can I have a large kebab, please?

Would you like salad with that?

He went "Salad?" and I went "No, just meat."

I thought he was going to kiss me.

I'd suddenly become an honorary Scotsman

because I pooh-pooh'd the salad.

We go to Abdul's down Oxford Road in Manchester

and get a chicken kebab, chicken tikka,

I mean, that other one,

like an elephant's leg that's had the skin ripped off it,

Urgh! No! But the chicken one, loads of salad, chillies,

yogurty sauce thing, great.

I am one of the few people who will eat a kebab in the day, if it's a decent one.

I discovered, whilst living in Glasgow,

the joy of the kebab with veggie pakora.

£5.50.

That works very well.

And you can make that last a couple of days

and the time it spends in the fridge and the microwave merely improve it.

But don't look too far down your nose at the lowly kebab.

It wasn't so long ago the Wimpy Bar was the popular palate pleaser.

It seems even today, we can't shake off

our yearning for the food of yesteryear.

Prawn cocktails, I love. There's nothing wrong with Marie Rose sauce

and I'm not talking about putting ketchup in your mayonnaise.

Marie Rose sauce is a specific condiment, it's a superb thing.

I could eat, I could feast on prawn cocktail and duck a l'orange.

I like the retro dishes, chicken Kiev, I love it,

It's quite difficult to make. You ever made it? It's hard work.

I've got very poor taste in food

so the 70's for me was a wonderful decade, Black Forest gateau

fake squirty cream, all that kind of thing, that was bang up my street.

There is your gateau.

Black Forest gateaux, steak and chips, nothing wrong with it,

moules-frites, mmm superb.

I like all those retro, simple dishes - steak and kidney pie. Ah!

My first ever order when I had a job as a waiter in a restaurant

was a prawn cocktail.

And, you know, I was new to the job

and I was hearing food terms I'd not come across before

and I heard the word cocktail

and so automatically just went to the bar,

thinking that a prawn cocktail

must therefore be some kind of fish-based drink.

The thing is now, they're going back to good pies.

They sell it like it's a good thing.

I saw a poster for a major supermarket on my way here today

that said "100% pure beef", you know,

and I thought, "well, yes! That's what goes in a beef pie.

"What was it before? What was going in there?"

We used to call them... They even say "100% ground beef", those burger outlets,

-but you know it's toes, lips and

-BLEEP

-anus-holes and all that, don't you?

You just know it's going to be rubbish in there.

Then you want the chopped parsley, it's no good without it.

Where did I see the chopped parsley? I reckon I... It's all right.

It's in here. Let's have a look.

Here it is, yeah. It's all wet in here.

I'll kill that bloody cat.

So, now we have become slightly more refined in our tastes

things have gone a bit downhill for me, really.

There's been this weird thing, where food has become ironic

because everything has to have a layer of irony on it now.

So, you're not just eating an avocado with prawn cocktail on it,

you're eating an ironic avocado with prawn cocktail.

There's lots of restaurants in London now,

that serve what was naff food,

is now, you know... First of all it was just food,

then it was naff food and now it's ironic food.

It seems to be a way of enabling people who think they're cool

to eat things they like but know are naff,

but being cool never really troubled me

so I would just always eat anything I felt like eating

and if that was a chocolate flake sandwich, then so be it.

Hmm. What doesn't go to waste, goes to the waistline.

Whether it's cool or hot, raw or burnt, we'll eat it.

and the result is, everywhere you look are expanding grumpy guts.

After all, you are what you eat.

I have been on every single diet that's known to man,

even diets I haven't tried, I've known about them.

It's a load of codswash, dieting. All that misery, for what?

You could fall under a bus tomorrow.

I could.

You wouldn't fit under a bus. It would have to be jacked up.

I don't really diet, I know people would find that hard to believe

cos I'm quite lithe, I'm quite svelte.

Although my doctor did recently say that I should diet,

I should watch what I'm eating.

But I just like to eat what I'm eating.

Just sitting there looking at it, that's no good.

I start salivating. And when I salivate, stand back.

There's a lot of diets at the moment

that are telling us to eat like French women,

ie evidently French women, the reason they look slim all the time

is they just have a tiny little bit of chocolate

and then they put the whole bar back,

so they're very thin. They're obviously mentally ill though.

When we aren't being bombarded by commercials for burgers and biscuits

we're being seduced by the skinny, smiley people

of the devilish diet industry, a multi-billion pound business

that promises to reduce our waistline

but actually just slims down our wallet.

If you're going to do a fad diet,

what you read in the magazine will never be what happens.

It's never going to be what happens.

What you read in the magazine probably worked on one person,

once, in 1975 and it's never worked again.

The Atkins, the cabbage soup, the zone diet, the inzone diet,

all zone or is that a travelcard?

So what's the diet?

What it is you do is, you eat a hard boiled egg before every meal

and that hard boiled egg actually eats some of the meal for you

so you lose weight.

I did once try that cabbage soup diet,

and that tipped me to the edge of mental illness really.

I mean, you found yourself fixating on the jacket potato

you are allowed on day 13 or something.

I went on the Atkins diet. I didn't eat carbs for a week.

I nearly fainted when I saw a bowl of crisps

and I attacked it like a savage animal.

The Ron Atkinson diet, where you spend too much money on every meal

and wear gaudy jewellery.

I found these over by the stairs. What are they?

Love handles. Lots of people lose them taking the stairs instead of the escalator.

You meet men and they've suddenly just dropped two-and-a-half stone

or they go on a diet and they immediately lose three stone,

and you go, "How did you do that?

"How did you lose all that weight so quickly?" And they go,

"Oh, I just stopped drinking coffee twice a week,

"I still drink it the other three days

"but twice a week I stopped and the weight just dropped off".

Ronni Ancona, I mean, I don't know if you know her,

but she will always pretend she's not going to eat something.

When we went out together she'd say, "Oh, no, I don't want chips,

"I won't have any chips. You have chips, if you want to.

"No, you have them, you have the chips."

Of course, I have chips and what happens? She goes,

"Can I just have one of your chips?

"Can I just have another of your...? Can I have another chip?"

And she'd eat all the chips.

I don't really need to watch what I eat particularly.

Although, this shirt's a little old.

But...

..maybe I ought.

People who go on these faddy diets are often vilified

you know, I mean, I prefer to vilify greedy people

who keep stuffing their faces and sitting next to me

on planes and things and taking up at least a half of my seat.

I'm only allowed 10 kilos in my bag

and so's the fat bastard in front of me, you know what I mean?

He's carrying 20 kilos under his jumper, you know?

And I go on, Mr Slim and I've got 12.2,

No, I've got to take a couple of books out me bag. Have I? Yeah.

What if I stuff them up his jumper?

This is Captain Patterson speaking, on behalf of Bucketflot airlines

I would just like to welcome you aboard flight 587 to Greece.

We should be flying at a altitude of 35,000 feet but as my co-pilot

today is Fat Bloke, we probably won't manage more than 15,000 feet.

So don't have a go at people who are trying to do something about it,

tackle these great lard arses who just think it's fine

to eat kebab and chips 14 times a day.

Size 10 and 12 is... People are like,

"Women aren't naturally size 10, come on, get real,

"We are size 16 these days".

Yeah, but we're over a size 16 and size 40 waist, men,

cos we're eating too much. It's not how we're supposed to be.

We didn't evolve to be blubbers and go to Dorothy Perkins, extra large.

They give them names that aren't humiliating, are they?

Dorothy Perkins Finesse.

I have put on a lot of weight though,

I used to be 7 pound 3 ounces.

I remember, as a teenager, kind of, circling Slim Fast in Boots,

-JAWS THEME

-as if it had magical properties...

..and I even bought a tub of it and I kept it under my bed.

And I would just take it out and look at it

like it was the ring from Lord Of The Rings.

This was the solution to all my problems but if I ever opened it,

you know, like it was a Pandora's box and all the sorrows

and woes of the world would come out of this tub of banana Slim Fast.

It all starts off in your head. You need to look after your head first,

and everything else will connect.

I'm going to hug a tree now.

How very hippy, trippy green of you.

Those veggie, vegan, right on, limp-wristed, lettuce lovers

seem to be everywhere these days.

People who just eat fish. Pescatorians.

They can pescator off in my opinion.

There may be vegetarians in the room

when you're even doing something like this, they'll say something.

Normally they'll answer through their food pipe, "You mustn't mock me. We're people too."

Or if they've got the energy, they'll actually get up!

I've got mates of mine who are vegetarians

and I always make a special effort when they come round.

I do, for example, a vegetarian curry, I do some nice pilau rice

and I'll maybe do a sag aloo, which is spinach and potato

and to that I'll add a bit of ginger,

a bit of turmeric, a bit of coriander, some ground cumin, some garam masala

and then I cook it in lard.

I'm being facetious. I was vegetarian for three years.

Incredibly hard round my dad, who literally measures life by "money and meat, yeah? Meat, boy!

"Meat and money, meat, money, meat, money, meat, money, death.

"That's right, boy, life. Meat and money."

My dad actually counts, will start the meal by counting.

Let's say we've gone for a curry, for example.

He'll count the bits of chicken tikka to assess value. What a caveman.

"In my chicken tikka there better be at least eight hunks of meat",

M-O-Y-T, "moyt" and he'll count it,

"one, two, three, good value, nice one, Abdul. Feast, family."

There is a vegetarian supermarket here in Chorlton

and I made the mistake of asking one of the staff, who was in fact a...

they do themselves no favours, a dreadlocked granny,

must be 75, grey dreadlock,

dread man, dreaded up there, now, me say,

grey dreadlock, all the way down the back, long one, you know,

pierced nose, crocs, and rolled up dungarees.

I mean, honestly, you couldn't make it up,

and I said "Excuse me, I can't seem to find your eggs," and she went,

"We don't sell eggs" and I thought, "My God!

"It's vegan, it's a vegan shop", so I said,

"Well, you can keep your garlic cashews then, I'm off" and I walked.

They don't stock honey, do they? Cos it's stealing from the bees!

Ah. Stealing from the bees. They're all going to come back in a swarm

and sting us to death, aren't they?

Oh, my God! Vegetarians, good luck to you. Vegans, what on Earth?!

I went through the stage of being a vegan

but purely because I fancied someone who was a vegan.

I wanted him to think I was cool so I became... I nearly died.

I had beans on toast for two years,

I was about six stone by the end of that relationship.

Vegetarians, what they fail to realise

is that meat is only a by-product of making shoes and belts.

What we going to do when we've all made our suede jackets and things?

You can't just leave, like, I mean, that animal ceases to exist,

it won't hold itself together cos we've had the skin off it.

So, you might as well eat that, that's really environmental,

that's got to be environmentally sound,

otherwise it will just go ppffff.

The scotch egg.

The scotch egg, for me, especially if you're a vegan,

is there anything more philosophically corrupt for the vegan than the scotch egg,

which has death on the outside and the potential for life within?

It seems like every month, some scientist is telling us

that certain foods are bad for us and certain foods are good.

Well, now they've gone the whole roast hog

and decided that some foods have superpowers,

and like lemmings we're all blindly jumping on the superfood bandwagon.

It's funny, the whole superfood thing,

they're just great foods to eat.

Fantastic! Avocados, magical. Rub it on your face,

don't even eat it, rub it on your face. It's wicked for your skin.

What makes me laugh about superfoods is,

being Iranian, I've grown up with pomegranates,

pomegranate is like, the national fruit of Iran,

and all of a sudden, in this country

we've discovered the pomegranate and it's sold at exorbitant prices.

It's just a fruit, all fruit and veg is good for you, eat it and shut up.

Gillian McKeith says it's meant to make you look all shiny and healthy.

Have a look, love.

The latest thing with superfoods is that you're made to feel bad,

almost ostracised, if you don't know about...

"You don't have goji berries and quinoa?

"Well, you know...

"die now."

I want to be committed on the superfood thing but surely

with superfoods, is it like a super hero?

Is it like, you can have a small amount of contact with a superfood

and that will do for the year?

Of course it doesn't work, you know,

avocados are going to make you run at 60 miles per hour

and like, if you have some mung beans or something,

it's going to help you work out the internal angles of a parallelogram?

Just nonsense.

Finding out that beetroot is really good for you

can't be any surprise because it's really good for you

apart from the fact that it's horrible.

You know, so if you're going to eat something that's horrible,

it would have to have something going for it, wouldn't it?

But now we've got all these foods open to us,

we should be forgetting beetroot, really.

But it is primarily a female thing, the beetroot.

Men who like beetroot are not to be trusted.

I'm absolutely off it on acai berry at the moment,

I'm on acerola cherries.

You getting anything off that acerola cherry?

Mate, that is absolutely great. Do you know what?

before I came in here I did two of those acai berries

and they were like, "Just do one, mate" and I was like, "No, I'm going to do two,"

took them in an innocent smoothie, downed the lot.

I'm having an absolute blinder.

I love blueberries but I wouldn't go nuts, just, well,

I like nuts, but I wouldn't go blueberries for them. Oh.

This is a horrible conundrum, we've got into.

SINGS COUNTDOWN CONUNDRUM MUSIC

One thing guaranteed to get us Grumpies groaning

is how those supermarkets ravage towns all across the UK.

Transforming quaint little places

into nothing more than roundabouts and car parks.

It's a love-hate thing going on with supermarkets,

because they put up these massive, giant, hangar-like places

and fill them full of nicely attractive polished up food.

And things don't get any easier when you enter the culinary coliseum.

There's simply too much choice.

Do we really need 1,000 different breakfast cereals?

And then it's a battle of conscience over cost.

The carbon footprint, the sell-by date,

air miles, plastic packaging.

it's a ruddy minefield.

You get into this dilemma, where you think, the Kenyan fine bean.

It's flown in from Kenya, it's beautiful.

The sugar snap pea, flown in from Kenya, it's beautiful.

We don't have them over here, there isn't an alternative.

But you think, if I don't buy them

I'm affecting Kenyan farmers who are making a lot of money out of that

but the irrigation is taking a lot of water out of Kenya.

I'm like, I don't really care, you know, carbon footprint to me,

the only carbon involved in my life is when I overcook me dinner.

It's a nightmare, constantly trying to juggle things.

Are air miles or packaging more important?

If it's come from Israel, it's probably tastier

than if it's come from Southend.

I don't like the fact that I have to be the entire world's conscience

when I'm just trying to get a bit of dinner.

Sell-by dates themselves are this constant tease of like,

"do you believe me?

"Are you going to go past me? What do you think?

"If you eat me after this date you might get botulism,

"but are you big enough to take the risk?

"Come on, try me, it's only two days since I expired, what do you think?

"Three days is pushing it, but two? You want that, don't you? Come on."

Of course, if the supermarket leaves you bamboozled,

with its row upon row of products,

you could always pop on your wellies and hunt out a farmers market...

..where, supposedly, everything is nicer, tastier, organic, free range,

and has had a happy fulfilling life. And costs the earth.

I mean, you're actually paying for the earth.

Being a bit of a foodie, I do try and source, you know,

good, organic, local, I always think,

provinence-based goods to cook with, but they are few and far between.

I mean, I love the local farmers market I go to in Ally Pally,

but honestly, you need to re-mortgage before you go up there.

If I go to the farm shop up the road from us,

known locally as the £50 shop.

It's like, no matter what you buy it seems to come to around £50.

I'm not really into this farmers market stuff. The only time you'd find me at one

is if there was a kebab shop and snooker table.

The difference between that and a French market, unbelievable.

French markets are farmers who come with their produce,

the same as they do in England,

and it's cheaper than the supermarkets.

It's cheaper, it's better, it's fresher.

And they come along with their wares and their chattels

and all covered in the usual crap, and mud

and like, things crawling out of it to give it that extra authenticity.

In England, farmer's markets are only made for the aristocracy.

You've got to go down in your roller and wear your finery.

Nibble on bits of cheese and go away with a 40-pound chicken,

and not in weight, by the way,

that's how much it costs you for a chicken for two people.

Because it's got cow poo on, it's twice the price.

It's got coo poo on, it's from the farmers market. Then I don't mind paying £20 for it.

Here's an apple, it's covered in bird poo but it's from the farmers market.

If it's covered in poo, pay twice the price.

Not for me.

Kebab and chips, please, Mr Farmer.

And now I'm on to THE perfect red wine.

And nothing shows how cultured or classy you are as a fine wine.

Mm!

But can any of us really tell the difference

between a bottle of plonk or a fine pinot noir?

That is just wall to wall fruit.

I think it's always nice to start off with something quite,

you know, maybe over the £10 mark, even.

Oh!

But then, after that, I can't taste it.

I just, I don't really...

I know there's going to be people watching this,

especially my family, going, "Oh, why are you so common?"

Sorry.

Mmm. Urgh.

It's like oranges, almost like orange boxes too, pencil shavings.

I don't tend to pay more than a fiver for a bottle of wine,

I've been lucky enough to be in a posh restaurant now and again

and you see bottles for £40, £50.

I genuinely can't taste the difference.

And when people say, "you just don't have a mature palate",

it's like, "No, I don't have a mature wallet."

It's like a great pile of grapefruits and lemons

all fresh cut and heaped together.

If you were in a Chinese restaurant and by mistake

you drank the finger bowl with those flowers in it, it's like that.

I was on holiday with some of my friends and we had themed nights,

and I chose the '70s as my theme and we had a bottle of Blue Nun.

I thought it was lovely.

Are you laughing?

It's as though someone has taken

an entire spice cupboard and hurled it into a vat of perfumed bath oil.

The wine industry, because that's what it is, essentially, now,

is a con, along with all the rest of the culinary nonsense.

You get these experts on television and they're going,

"Oh, yes, do you know what it's got? It's got a very arrogant bouquet."

Arrogant bouquet.

You get nettles, you know, the sort of taste of the smell and you also get new mown hay.

It's a bottle of wine, get over it.

Some people can tell, you know, its fruitiness,

and they can tell the year and they can tell the acidity

at which the vineyard cultivated the grapes...

I can't tell that, but I can sort of tell

if the bottle's been open and left for a day and a half

before a glass has been poured in because it's a bit like diesel.

I do get so frustrated with these people who go on about wine, particularly.

"It's not good. Oh, it's got a good head, it's got a good body..."

Either it tastes like vinegar or it's quite nice.

That's all you need to know.

Something of everything there,

apples rotting in an old school desk,

a dart board on fire near a toothpick farm,

a newt on holiday in Tangiers. What did you think, Oz?

I love you.

Going out for a meal can be more catastrophic than gastronomic.

For a start, the waiters are supposed to wait on us

but often leave us doing all the waiting.

And when they do decide to grace us with their presence

they peer down their noses at us,

giving us that look that says "The customer is always...

"a right pain in the neck."

And in return for being made to feel that you're inconveniencing their evening,

they want a tip!?

The British, we can be in a restaurant

and get the most abysmal food and service and the whole evening,

I've been out to dinner with friends,

where almost the whole evening was talking about

"Oh, look at that. Have you seen...? Oh. Look at the under side of that."

Waiter comes along and says, "Everything OK?"

-"Lovely thank you..."

-SHE MOUTHS

Could you make me a Waldorf salad?

-A Wa...

-Waldorf salad.

I think we've just out of waldorfs.

Whereas an American, they will order like, a tuna salad,

a tuna and tomato salad and always off the carte.

-Just go out there and see if he knows how to fix me a Waldorf salad.

-Of course, yes.

I've got that real English thing about me,

that if it says on the receipt you've got to leave a tip,

I'll leave it because I've been told that I've got to do it, so I better do it

even if they've been rubbish I'll still do it, you know.

I love this discretionary service charge,

discretionary service charge which isn't discretionary

because it's already been added to your bill,

sort of, metaphorically, you've got a gun to your head.

I've only ever once had them remove it though, I did once.

The service was so awful, that I actually quite relished

when the bill came and the service charge was on, saying,

"Can you bring that bill back without the service charge, please?"

and they didn't even, they couldn't even go, "Why?"

They were like, "All right, fair do's, yeah, you've got a point there".

And then, it depends, tipping.

You do it in England if you're told to do it,

you do it in America whatever,

you don't do it there because it's rude.

It's all too much for me, really.

I can never really get my head round it.

Having worked as a waiter, I have more sympathy.

I love it when you see a new waiter

who doesn't know what they're doing and I see a bit of myself in them

and I feel a lot of sympathy for them.

I think a lot of the service is very good but, erm,

how am I going to say this without seeming like a Daily Mail reader?

The relationship you have with your waiter can really make or break a meal.

It's great when you can talk and joke with them.

What happens more often is you talk to them

and they don't speak any English except being able to take your order.

-Excuse me.

-Yes?

-We've been waiting here for half an hour, now,

I mean, I gave the waiter our order.

-Oh, him, he's hopeless, isn't he?

-I don't wish to complain

but when he does bring something it's wrong.

You think I don't know?

I mean, you only have to eat here, we have to live with it.

I had to pay his fare all the way from Barcelona

but you can't get the staff. It's a nightmare!

It's kind of true that if you can't communicate as to what you want,

the experience is gone and I find it very difficult

when you ask for something and they bring you something else...

I'd better not get into that.

Actually, old boy, the form is that you catch the waitress's eye.

Look, I'll show you.

I went to a Michelin-starred place in Dublin once

and the staff were incredibly snooty.

And there was a thing that they had done wrong, basically...

..and I had a legitimate complaint.

Waitress!

And I kept trying to make it and the guy kept talking over me, you know

and eventually I would go, "OK, why don't you stop talking and then you'll know what my problem is?"

you know, I actually said. And it's quite gratifying to learn

that because of the recession that place has closed down.

I was very pleased to hear that.

I can't stand surly waiters and waitresses and they come down, like,

like this, with the knife and fork.

"Can I have some salt and pepper, please?" Salt and pepper.

You see them gather in the centre of the restaurant going,

"Did you see them at table 3?" They're having a good time and you go, "Excuse me".

I just want to slap them.

It seems that every time you turn on the telly,

there's a new chef jumping on the celebrity chef band wagon...

..from Sophie Dahl, who never got model-thin eating what she cooks,

to foul-mouthed Ramsay, who made a fortune f-ing and blinding across our screens.

You, shut it, OK? Back in your corner.

Listen to what's going on.

Celebrity chefs in general, they're overpaid and they're over here.

I've not got into the whole cooking programme thing,

which is a bummer for me cos there's nothing else on TV.

It's all about cooking.

Antony Worrall Thompson!

Celebrity chefs, I think should all be lined up and shot.

That's pukka, well sexy, you know what I mean? Beautiful, nice.

You'll be laggered by the end of this meal. Beautiful.

I'm done, mate. Have a nice sleep, pukka.

Celebrity chefs always seem to be on some crusade,

telling us stuff we already know,

all for some ruddy book or to endorse their new kitchen utensil.

Give us a break! A fork will forking do just as good a job.

Ready, steady, cook!

What, it's been 10 years now that we've been putting up with Ramsay

and Oliver and Nigella, and what's she about?

Every week it's melons and bananas. You tell me, all right?

She should just do it topless and just get it over and done with.

That's my opinion, you know.

Well, it's my fantasy, really.

..Smells so heavenly and my oranges, they are bobbing about.

I wouldn't actually eat any food from Nigella

even though her recipes are great -

the fact that she'd have licked her fingers

all the way through the preparation of my food. No. No.

I only saw Nigella's programme for the first time recently.

It looked like someone doing an impersonation

of Ronni Ancona doing an impersonation of Nigella Lawson.

I have here chopped onions.

Hot bacon.

-Spring onions.

-Cold turkey.

-Summer

-onions, some aren't onions.

White bread.

-And there we have it.

-Cut.

Nigella, I think we caught a bit of the wand in shot.

Did we? Oh, look, I'm so sorry.

She'd open her fridge and she goes, "Look." She'd take out a bag

and say, "I always have these frozen wolf nipple chips.

"You just don't know when you're going to... They're so useful!

"Always keep a bag of these because you don't know

"when you're going to use them. How easy is that?" What?

The thing about this time of year - you want to have your friends over,

you want to be hospitable, you want to have a party

and yet it can be a complete nightmare.

I do know that.

The thing I find a bit weird about Nigella Lawson is that

she's always talking about how she hasn't got time to cook anything.

So the food has to be really great to eat but, above all, easy on me.

So, she'll always be saying,

"Right, I need to make a meal for six tonight,

"but I'm too busy to do it, so here are my cheats."

And I just think, "What does Nigella think she does for a living?"

What is she too busy doing to cook?

Is there a whole other fantasy career that Nigella Lawson has,

that we don't know about,

that means she doesn't have time to cook the meals

for her TV cookery show? I don't understand.

It's your job to cook it. Where are you off to?

They're all chefs now. Sophie Dahl, which is pretty handy,

cos her surname is the name of an Indian side dish,

so that's quite clever really.

-Jamie

-Olive-er,

-no, don't work, really, does it?

I do quite like Jamie Oliver, I do like Jamie Oliver.

There's something nice, rugged and sweet about him.

Rosy cheeks, lovely pretty wife and cute kids.

Mmm, thank you very much.

Good on you, mate.

Let's have a little taste. Blinding, pukka.

Quite like that.

Sweeeet.

I had a great love of food before I went on MasterChef.

These celebrities are all passionate about food.

You've got the chefs, there, with their arms folded

taking it all far too seriously.

We're looking for that exceptional cooking star.

I didn't like MasterChef.

Someone who's more than just a good home cook.

"Food does not get any more serious than this".

Someone with that extra something special.

"This is the moment of truth".

It's not the moment of truth, it's a cake!

How far can you go on MasterChef?

I'd like to go very far, all the way to the end. Bye-bye.

What I found most stressful about doing MasterChef,

here's a bit of behind the scenes for you,

is the fact that there's no food behind the scenes.

So, if I was crying it was because I was hungry,

not because I was stressed out.

I was just hungry.

The celebrity chefs that I don't like are the ones that do the bullying thing

and to me it's such a manufactured ill temper,

it's like watching those wrestlers on Sunday morning when you're a kid,

"Waa!" and they're all jumping on each other's head

and doing moves that, if they were real, the other person would be dead.

My pudding is similar to a traditional Christmas pudding in many ways.

It looks great, it's full of naughty ingredients and can be made in advance,

but is easier to make and much lighter.

I guess it's a bit like a Christmas present -

the wrapping looks great

and when you open it there's a wonderful surprise inside.

That's shit!

Ramsey's a bit of an individual case,

he was a kind of meticulous, you know, top international chef

who has dubious people skills.

You're going to think I'm a right arsehole.

I've watched his thing recently, for the first time

and there are all these people who want to be chefs

and people come in to have dinner and can see through to the kitchen,

and he's screaming at them all!

-I can't just think about one

-BLEEP

-table.

"You call that a starter?"

-Move down, you

-BLEEP

-doughnut.

"If that had come out of my arse, I'd be ashamed."

-Oh, for

-BLEEP

-sake.

"Get out, you scum, you're worthless! You're worse than a centipede!

"Lay down on the floor and be trodden on,

"you stinking, filthy, despicable moron."

-I don't want

-BLEEP

-33 customers refusing to pay for the main course.

I've sort of, for want of a better word, been in TV for 15 years or so

and I was always told you're not supposed to swear.

-All I want is 50 customers served 50 souffles and 50

-BLEEP

-bills paid.

I sound like such an old man, but when someone comes along and goes

"He's a chef but he swears!"

Right, that's an interesting twist on cookery.

"Get out, get out of my sight! I hope you're stabbed to death,"

and like, I think, if I was sort of,

if I was at that place, I'd think, "Ooh, I'm going somewhere else."

I don't care if the starter is a little bit cold

or something's not right,

but I do care that in order to make this starter

seven people have been murdered.

His books are the most complicated books on Earth,

I mean, I tried to follow, I'm very good at making scrambled eggs

and I tried to follow his recipe.

They weren't as good as mine and it took nearly an hour.

I wonder how many suicides are caused by this,

I wonder how many piles of corpses at the bottom of Beachy Head

have been created because people have thought,

"I tried to get my cupcake the same as Nigella's

"but I just couldn't get the icing to stay level".

Gordon Ramsay. I've never watched one of his programmes all the way through

-because I can't

-BLEEP

-bear

-BLEEP

-people who

-BLEEP

-swear all the

-BLEEP

-time.

Today it seems that everyone's allergic to something

and things that used to be bad manners like bloating and wind

are now all blamed on an allergic reaction.

I'm intolerant of people who are intolerant.

They come round and ask, "Has that got air in it?"

And you're like, "Yeah, it's a sponge cake."

"Yeah, but has that air been passed over a cashew nut

"at any point in the last millennium?"

And you're like, "Not sure." "No, I can't have it."

"Have you got any anti-histamine just in case?" I'm like, "Get out!"

And then there's the wheat allergies, dairy intolerance

and monosodium glutamate phobia.

Remember how, as a child, you had an imaginary friend?

Well, now you're grown-up, you can have an imaginary illness.

There was an experiment done recently on a programme that I saw,

not that I watch much TV, it sounds like I do,

where they had someone, a bunch of people who said,

"I always have a reaction to MSG, monosodium glutamate,

"an allergic reaction, no, I can't!"

So this particular chef took them out to a Chinese restaurant.

They said, "Oh, no, they all use MSG, we're going to blow up and burst" and all this,

and they gave them all this food, chicken fried this,

noodle fried that and some nasi goreng or whatever,

and they all munch away and go,

"Oh, it's happening, I'm getting the tightening of the head,

"no, I can feel it, I'm getting all headachy.

"Oh, no, no, I can't. I need to eat some fresh food.

"Water, is there some water to wash away this MSG?"

None of the food had MSG in it.

They were all just bullshitters.

And then they took the same bunch of people to an Italian restaurant

where they loved the food and then told them it was packed with MSG.

You know. Any headaches now? No, they didn't suffer at all.

Chris Rock has a great routine about that, about how much food...

"Do you think there's anyone in Rwanda with a lactose intolerance?"

It does seem slightly strange that it's only, sort of, chubby

white, western people who seem to have all these food allergies

and a lot of them are always fat, as well, aren't they?

"Do you think I want to eat cakes? Let me tell you, I don't, babes.

"I would love to be eating vegetables

"but if I eat 'em, I come out in this rash.

"It's really...disgusting... Why don't men like me?"

My first girlfriend had a nut allergy

but I don't really want to go into that.

People are looking for something to blame,

whereas what's to blame is they're fat and lazy

and drink and eat too much.

It's nothing to do with these intolerances, you know.

It's just, they want to stuff their faces but want something...

then they feel dreadful and want it to be the fault of some food group.

It's not, it's the fault of you, you greedy git.

-My boss.

-Sorry?

-She has to have brown bread. She's got Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Oh, that's just become a status symbol, that has.

I get annoyed when people say, "I can't eat bread,

"I don't want bread," or, "Bread's bad for you!"

When was bread...? It's in the Bible, daily bread,

it's always been good for us. Why's bread suddenly this evil?

Irritable Bowel Syndrome! What happened to flatulence by the way?

I think it is the same people who say "Cats shouldn't have milk."

You think, cats want milk! If they see milk they have it!

That's got to say something, surely?

Genetic evolution over thousands of years.

If the cat didn't want the milk, if it wasn't good for him,

he wouldn't have it. If bread wasn't good for us...

"Oh, no, bread makes you feel very bloated, you can't have bread, no."

Has any one ever played Revel roulette with friends with a peanut allergy?

That's brilliant. If you find a mate who's up for it, do Revel roulette.

Ohh, coffee! Peanut, game over.

"Classic, classic mate!" Trachy.

Those clever scientists who firstly sold us the dairy allergy

are now cashing in with the cure,

selling us those little bottles of magic

that make our tummies all better and smiley.

What the heck is friendly bacteria?

Does it like, call you up about 9.00 and say,

"Do you want to come out for a pint, son? You've had a long day."

Friendly bacteria? What is that, I don't know?

I don't know about it.

God knows what friendly bacteria is.

I don't know what probiotic means. I'm looking at this.

It claims that it helps improve digestive transport. I'm no wiser.

I don't know, it gives you a terminal illness

but you actually live for eight years rather then four.

"Yes, well, the test results are through and, um, the good news is,

"it's friendly bacteria, and so you should make it to Christmas".

You mean L. casei Immunitas?

L. casei Immunitas?

I'm afraid not, that's a planet in Dr Who, wasn't it?

Bifidus Digestivum.

Kind of an acidophilus base?

Basilius made-up-ium?

What is this invented bullshit that they've...? L. casei Immunitas?

It's like, shampoos are no better,

they are full of stuff like boswellocks and rejenium.

What is that?

Imaginarium Dr Parnassus is another one.

There's only so much friendly bacteria can do.

I'm not saying it doesn't work because I drink it daily,

but I think sometimes we rush to make false correlations,

so the already healthy middle class people start drinking bacteria and have quite good health,

whereas it would be quite interesting

to feed them to 16-stone Terrys, Garys and Leannes.

Could you imagine that tiny bacteria?

"Look, I'm here to try and help you, mate,

"but there's only so much I can do, you fat bastard".

Not since drinking bottled water has there been,

not since that was marketed to us, has the idea of...

You can imagine that meeting.

"Right, we're going to teach people to drink bacteria."

"How we going to sell them on that?"

"By telling them that there's good bacteria and bad bacteria."

"OK, we'll give it a whirl."

And they managed it. I say, hats off!

There are all kinds of natural things you can put into your body

which force reactions and things.

I'm a bit suspicious about them, because "Yakult"?

Cult!

I do know about friendly bacteria, actually,

because it helps break down naughty bacteria that are in your body. We're full of them.

Saliva has got friendly bacteria in it but you wouldn't want to rub it in your wounds, would you?

Your stomach contents need friendly bacteria to help digest food,

it will prevent pumpy smells. You've got friendly bacteria in your colon.

You know where your colon is, don't you?

I mean, it's just above your Secombe

and you don't want to go down there either, small intestine, Secombe,

colon full of friendly bacteria,

all the little fusillis, all full of it,

breaking down your food for you

into various compartments and departments

so that you can then enjoy your life. They're good.

And if you're still hungry after all that,

get stuffed.

# Food, glorious food

# Don't care what it looks like

# Burnt, underdone, crude

# Don't care what it cooks like

# Just thinking of growing fat

# Our senses go reeling

# One moment of knowing that

# Full up feeling

# Food, magical food

# Wonderful food, marvellous food

# Fabulous food, beautiful food

# Glorious food! #

HE BURPS