TV Chefs - pleasure or pain?

I don't know how his singing is holding up but he's still a bloody good dancer. Unfortunately he's been pigeon holed in the unfunny joke department and once the Beeb have type cast you there seems to be no way back.

I think I'd be quite content if he just pirouetted away towards infinity. To his credit he's always well turned out and has been an all-round good performer. It's just those same old jokes over and over again....even my dear old buddy Victor M knew when the time had come to move on.

Will Brucie be mummified before he takes up his position in the British Museum - or are we taking it for granted that he already has been?

James Martin, Nigel Slater and Delia are all great, simple cooks producing delicious recipes that are easy to follow.Not all tv chefs are 'puffed up' in my view.

Are you sure papaoscar that you are not the screenwriter for One Foot In The Grave? You and Victor do seem to have a lot in common.

Camera angles, Deedaa, will indeed be dead in the water. And Brucie - a free transfer to ITV, perhaps, or prominent position at the British Museum. That should do the trick.

I will happily be CEO if you will ban the irritating habit of filming someone talking from 6 different angles! By the time they finish the first sentence we will have seen them from the front, the right, the left, up the right nostril, and a sneaky little shot of the left ear! In my innocence I thought that we were supposed to listen to what an interviewee was saying - it may just be my age but I can't concentrate while the camera's leaping around.

By the way, will you be encouraging Bruce to leave or actually pushing?

Splendid idea, Deedaa. Thanks to a lifetime's dedication to my knightly vows of penitence and obedience (no point in worrying about chastity now) I have managed to accumulate the grand sum of £5:3:6d which should comfortably see off anything young Edmonds could put up for the Beeb, so 'game-on', I say!

My first act, apart from appointing myself Life Director General, of course, and you as CEO, would be to rename the outfit the new Best of British - Cor!. I would then implement the following:-

1) Abolish all licence fees and introduce pay-to-view instead, subject to annual capping or 'season ticket' arrangements.
2) Slim down the TV channels to just two (for sport and war-films, perhaps, but I probably wouldn't get away with that). I would, however, leave the radio network intact, apart from Radio 1 and certain shouty presenters who would be fired from a large cannon. Sir Terence Wogan would be reinstated to Radio 2 in the morning with immediate effect.
3) Set up nationwide TV and radio quality-control monitoring arrangements to give the public a direct and major role in the running of the newBBC. All programmes would be subject to majority public consent.
4) Make arrangements for all news broadcasts to be delivered on the basis of facts only, by presenters of the status, calibre and dignity of, say, Moira Stewart or the late Richard Dimbleby. There would be no speculation, opinions, or pointless computer graphics. I would also restore an up-graded Ceefax service.
5) Sir Bruce Forsyth would be encouraged to slip quietly out of the back door.
6) The use of background music and voiceovers would be strictly controlled.
7)The concept and use of the word 'celebrity' would be banned, particularly in relation to programmes relating to cooking and food.

I am sure that all this could be set out on the back of an envelope and brought into force by the week-end. What do you think?

There's currently a lot of talk about someone buying up the BBC (Noel Edmonds has been suggested) Any chance you could do us all a favour papaoscar and buy it yourself and get some decent programmes started?

Might actually watch that version papaoscar sounds more fun than the original

PS what exactly are you rolling?

Happy Sunday papaoscar you have made mine

And me!

I'll have some of what you're having, papaoscar

I have a vision of a chaotic Masterchef-type programme where all the contestants are quite unsuitable and proceed to reduce the proceedings to a shambles. Egg on the faces of the patronising presenters and appalling gobbets of awfulness dropped and spattered all over the pompous judges. The graven-faced lady chef dangled over the 'sous-vide' for tenderising and poor old Monsieur Le 'ead Chef served up on a platter with an apple stuffed in his mouth. The competition reduced to an unseemly brawl in the course of which the male judges are de-bagged and chased out of the studio, and the posh lady judge required to don the Marigolds and do do all the washing-up. I must stop rolling my own!

As I just posted on another forum, my X works for a 'very famous celeb chef' and he would go to the opening of an envelope to promote himself, his school,his books and himself. He sent my DD a cookery book as a wedding gift, ummm it made the Delia one on boiling eggs look exciting. I am a chef and they are all up themselves to put it bluntly.....

I am becoming sick of the sight of chefs cooking outdoors and that includes, I'm afraid, the lovely James Martin. At least he doesn't sit down and try and balance it all on his knees like Jamie Oliver and Dick Strawbridge but the other day he was cooking in a polytunnel and then complained because he was too hot

Same here. I do enjoy The Sewing Bee though!

I find cooking programmes ineffably boring. The only one I have ever found interesting, and then for one series only, was River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and it was the food production and sourcing that interested me, not the cooking.

It is not that I do not like food or cooking, it is just that I find it very boring to watch.

James Martin is definitely not included as far as I'm concerned!!

I can't stand Masterchef

Hear, hear papaoscar

I had to suppress a moan of despair when I heard that Master Chef is coming back to our TVs soon.

I hope that the very lovely James Martin is not included in the above tirade

Papaoscar I have enjoyed your posts.

I would keep away from caffeine for a while if I were you, papaoscar

I am enjoying this thread!

Ah, kitchen implements! What a rich vein of expensive, flashy, and often almost totally useless artefacts come to mind. Memories of unhappy hours spent dismantling gizmos to try and clean out logs jams of congealed dross, then trying to put the bits back together again. Heaven preserve me from the multi-purpose tool which does everything poorly and nothing well. Like the slicer very good for whipping bits off fingers, reminiscent of something straight out of the Spanish Inquisition or some awful mass circumcision rite.

My latest excursion into the black hole of kitchen redundancy has been the special plastic bags into which you place your cheese sandwiches before slipping them into the toaster. Foolproof and perfect results were promised and first indications were promising. Glorious smells of toasting cheese and HP sauce indeed wafted our way, but when I went to retrieve the same I found that the bags had split depositing burnt toast and molten cheese over the elements. This mess soon solidified and I was unable to keep this knowledge from the High Priestess, who immediately broke off diplomatic relations and imposed an instant exclusion zone for me from the kitchen. Ah, such is life in the pursuit of progress.

Now, whilst I've been reading the paper, hiding in the shed behind the comforting bulk of the redundant strap-on portable gas barbecue from last summer, I note that our local Mega warehouse is offering a fabulous-looking contraption the size of a small wheelbarrow which will actually make two cups of steaming, frothing coffee at the same time. And all for just £399! That should surely sooth the fevered brow of Her Holiness and help to restore me to my lowly place in the pecking order...