Have you been watching the current series of Nevermind The Buzzcocks, which is halfway through its run on BBC2? Have you noticed how, in the manner of Have I Got News For You, they’ve managed to spice the gags and tweak the dynamic so that the presenter is close to arbitrary?
Do you like cooking?
Are you a keen gardener?
Oh – one other thing… do you like homeopathic remedies?
If you ticked all of the above, you’ll love BBC2’s new cooking, gardening and homeopathic remedy show: Grow Your Own Drugs.
It’s a strange mixture of all of these elements squeezed into a format similar to Nigella Express or Chinese Food Made Easy. The only problem is, where those are both straightforward cookery shows, Grow Your Own Drugs’ presenter, James Wong sets out to squeeze in a factual basis for what he’s doing, growing the plant, cooking or preparing it and then, with the clock ticking away, providing a little bit of testimonial as to whether or not it worked. It’s a lot to slot in. Where Ching-He Huang migh collar a builder, cook for him, then eat with him, Wong has to jump through several hoops before he’s even at the hob.
Not only that, he’s also legally bound to provide disclaimers throughout. He starts the series off saying he’s ‘not some weird hippy’, slightly defensively, and proceeds throughout the show to warn us that he’s ‘not a doctor’, explaining that the tests aren’t ‘clinical trials’ and telling viewers not to smear pulverised fruit on their face if they’re worried that they might have allergies.
It comes across as incredibly restricting, as though Wong can’t get into his stride because he’s fenced in by indie-intros, justifying his own existence and explaining that he’s not a dispenser of pharmaceuticals. With half an hour to try and cure insomnia, constipation and dry skin using just a fruit bowl, the poor sod was always going to be up against it. The Naked Chef first appeared over a decade ago, but still the BBC are using this tired and stilted format for a large percentage of its factual TV, even when the content isn’t suited to it at all.
However, you don’t have to take my opinion as fact as I’m not a qualified writer. Always see a certified critic before watching gardening, cookery and homeopathy based television shows.
BBC2 have served up another sublime series of Masterchef this year and it’s difficult to choose which of the three finalists should win. In fact – I want them all to win, buy an island together and set up the most chaotic restaurant in the world, overcooking pies and not allowing cheesecakes to set until their hearts are thoroughly content.
But there can be only one – and my personal frontrunner at the moment is Andy, who last night managed to serve up what looks like a small, pastry panda sitting on a potato-bamboo raft (pictured above).
They’ve been through the tough times and tonight all they have to do is cook their best three-courser to seal their victory. They can count themselves lucky they’ve got past the stage where they have to cook for the critics. Anyone who has to go face-to-face with Jay Rayner without vomiting has been challenged, and being able to leave a meeting with that gorgon Kate Spicer without being turned into a miserable statue is a win in itself.
Let’s have a look at them in more detail…
* * *
Chris – The Small Boy:
Chris is a hapless little man, 24 years of age, who falls to amusing pieces when asked to lead a group. With the most unconvincing self up-talk of the bunch, you can’t help but feel sorry for him when he’s onscreen gazing at squid-ink pasta with an expression that reads ‘I am terrified of food’.
Reason to back him: He’s the youngest, is fresh-faced and seems like a decent chap.
Andy – The Comeback Kid:
Despite initally seeming like a bit of a braggart, Andy’s won us over despite his awkward swagger. Having failed last series, he’s returned stronger and is constantly rescuing Chris from disaster like a catering child-minder. Andy is pretty selfless and pretty bloody good at the old cooking. He’s earned his place in the final.
Reason to back him: The ‘comeback’ angle gives him the kind of story Producers loves to put out there.
Mat – The Happy Egg:
Mat’s the oldest and probably the most accomplished of the three, with the best palette on the evidence provided. He’s also endearingly weeble-like, and his goatie somehow makes him even more humpty like. After listening to him speak every day for the past two or three weeks, I still can’t place his accent, mind you.
Reason to back him: He cries all the time. Happy or sad, Mat’s your best bet for a blub-off. The cameras love an eye-dribbler.
* * *
Who will win?
Who deserves to win?
One things for sure – ‘whoever wins, it’ll change their life’.
BIG GUTSY FLAVOURS!
Hooray! Wacky baccy!
But is it really so wacky? Or is it, in fact, the trigger that unleashes all kinds of fresh madness? Why do some folk have a toke and find they remain an average bloke? How come some dumb-dumbs fill a lung and turn into voice-hearing bums?
Horizon decided to seek answers, last night with their enquiry, Cannabis: The Evil Weed? They turned to that flaky, unreliable thing we call science to help them out.
I tuned into this expecting yet more anti-weed propaganda and was pleasantly surprised. After an informative opening in which we learned that cannabis first evolved in Kazakhstan, developing THC to protect against ultra-violet light, there was futher explanation of how the chemical make-up affects the brain which was more extensive than any documentary I’ve seen on the BBC on the topic before.
That’s not that impressive, however, when you consider that the only item on this subject I’ve seen the BBC handle before was Michael Buerk’s hilariously sensational treatment on 999 – where the treatment of bong-discovery was akin to the uncovering of a decomposing five-year old, in a gritty black and white reconstruction.
Credit to John Marsden, he constantly reiterated that the really serious side-effects were only present in a tiny minority of early-adopters, but all the same, the editorial decision to include the story of ‘John’ from Manchester was a mistake.
Completely incomparable to the sad story of one young lad who developed schizophrenia (which merited inclusion), this psychologically-addicted John character was pictured complaining about how he can’t get a girlfriend or a job because of his spliff-habit.
He said, at one point, that he’s smoking ten joints a day – but when the camera caught the sight of the flapping rizla-mess between his fingers, it was apparent that he can’t even roll a bloody bifta. Also, the fact that his flat was plush and his clothing quite smart in conjunction with the assertion that he’s supposedly frittering away at least a tenner on skunk a day, it made it impossible to believe that his case actually exists. And even if it did, all he needs is a good talking to. Weed’s not the problem – he is.
The ultimate irony of the show, which served to demonstrate that there’s far more to this plant than the press let on, is that cannabis houses an anti-psychotic which sits naturally alongside the THC – which balances the potential for psychosis. So if it was harvested properly, away from the black market, it could actually be used to treat those who went mad because of it. It’s enough to fog your head.
Anyway – it’s a sad day for me – I’m having to give up writing this blog. The skunk’s taken over my life and I’m selling my computer to get a bumper pack of Golden Virginia. I’ve pimped the missus out so I can get my grimy fingers on some hash and, by the time you’ve read this, I’ll be injecting green skunky serum into my eyes with John and his mate, Michael Phelps.
Goodbye, friends.
Yet more food-based television for you.
Bet you can’t wait. Like the TV Execs who commission this stuff endlessly, I reckon your hunger for this junk-TV is insatiable. TV is your feeder and you, reader, are its BBV (Big Beautiful Viewer).
So first up, Gok Wan. Channel 4’s Mr Charisma – otherwise known as ‘him again’ – manages to tell us very little of any substance over the course of fifty minutes apart from the fact that he was once absolutely bloody enormous. 21 stone of Gok. If you didn’t see it, all you missed out on were a few historical Gok-shots of Mr Wan when he was obese, wobbling about on a stage with a 90s curtain-cut. Not amusing, not particularly revelatory, just a little bit voyeuristic. All the stuff surrounding it left no real mark, so this ended up as just an anti-vanity piece by Gok – a slice of self-flagellation cum self-congratulation with no real purpose other than to strengthen his resolve not to eat pork pies ever again. Bizarre.
And so we move to BBC2’s latest Horizon offering – Why Are Thin People Not Fat?
I switched this on whilst eating two quarter pounders, chips and mushy peas. It’s a moronic question to which the only logical answer I could muster was ‘because they’re thin’, through a mouthful of masticated junk-cud. Swiftly followed by ‘now stop asking stupid questions and put a sitcom on’.
The brief for this show was to feed a handful of skinny students shitloads of cake and monitor them to see if they put on weight, which they did, in varying amounts. One kid’s extra input turned into muscle (the lucky swine), one kid grew a massive gut and most just grew love-handles. It was another tiresome example of the Spurlock Effect, in which lazy Producers, lost for ideas, nick the format of Supersize Me for the umpteenth time and film the predictable result.
Some vaguely amusing shots of the young ‘uns gorging themselves to the point of nausea aside, the rest of this was straight-faced fat-facts. It essentially comprised so many differing schools of thought on why some folk are pre-disposed to weight gain that it rendered them all meaningless, with no discernible conclusion amongst the wildly opposing scientific theories.
Pah! Thanks a lot, ’science’!
The kids lost the weight without any effort after two weeks. Gok lost all his girth years ago. BBC 2 and Channel 4 lost all their substance when this obsession with food robbed us of decent televisual output, which snowballed the minute Jamie Oliver, the Naked bloody Chef, made food trendy – and for that I reckon we should burn the bastard at the stake.
I like the fact that, among the programmes about thin people purposefully getting fat for scientific reasons on BBC2 and their numerous reality television broadcasts about food, they still find a place for a magazine show about intellectual stuff. It’s good that high-minded people have an outlet for their frustrations. The Culture Show is that outlet.
Last night the show was all about the Scotch (I’ve no idea why), so we were treated to Robert Carlysle talking gibberish under the guise of reciting some Burns poetry. Victor Meldrew talked about if for a bit and then the bloke out of Idlewild did a nice little song.Then they talked to the cumulatively irrelevant Franz Ferdinand and finished with an obligatory (but decidedly non-Scotch) African musical collective.
All very nice, inoffensive and aimed at a specific market. Most folk will prick their ears up for the film bits and the musical sections, then go back to their copies of Titbits when an item comes on about theatre – King Lear last night – presented by the woman with the unmoving mouth, Miranda Sawyer.
My main issue with The Culture Show lies with the presenters. The odd couple being, of course, Lauren Laverne and Mark Kermode. The chemistry between these two is really, really odd. When it comes to Kermode’s film reviews, Laverne indulges him with mock-shock gasps when he says something supoosedly scathing and tickles his fancy with scripted questions with blindingly obvious answers so that he can do that thing he does. That thing where he acts like he knows absolutely bloody everything about everything.
Admittedly, Kermode is a very intelligent bloke. He knows a lot about films, but there is one major issue with his style, which is that he’s started to resemble Michael Portillo’s Spitting Image puppet.
His hair is a plasticated lump that looks like it’s been nicked from Gunther Von Hagens’ spleen collection. I can’t get over his ridiculous quiff no matter how hard I try, and whenever I look at Laverne, I can’t get past the fact she works with Steve Jones over on Channel 4 on a weekly basis and doesn’t smash his blasted face in to a mushy pulp to save us from the builder-in-a-skinny-tie idiot.
For my part, I’ve been brainstorming better presenter couplings for the Culture Show – and here are some ideas:
If anyone at BBC 2 wants to get in touch, I reckon I’d revolutionise your casting sessions. Email at the usual address.
It’s a simple conceit. For today’s Friday Question, you, humble reader, are THROUGH to the final stage of the quarter final. It’s time to demonstrate your ability to the two spoon-loading pudgers with your signature three-course service.
So what would you cook up for Greg Wallace and John Torrode if you magically found yourself in the studio?
What do you cook best?
We’ll need a starter, a main and a dessert.
Then it’s over to Greg and John who are just like, hanging out at mine today (by coincidence) and will instruct me on what they think of your complex flavour combinations.
What three courses would you cook for Masterchef then, eh?
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Lurkers, now is the time to show yourselves!
