A bit of a golden balls up: David and Victoria’s son has launched a new cooking show
(Picture: Facebook)Out of the fire and into the frying pan? Not long after Paris Hilton’s madcap culinary wheeze, Cooking with Paris, saw its second series sucked up into the great extractor fan in sky, it emerges that Brooklyn Beckham has been drawn to the gas-stove glamour of life in a kitchen. His new show has the same frame as Paris’: a celebrity(ish) friend is invited over, Brooklyn cooks (ish) with their help, and hilarity — mild, mild hilarity, the kind that is really not very hilarious at all — ensues. Even the name is basically the same: Cookin’ with Brooklyn. Granted, the half-rhyme gets points.
Perhaps that’s what inspired the show; Brooklyn’s ability in the kitchen can’t have been it. Still, cooking is sexy and Brooklyn is here for it, so much so in one episode he tells his guest: “This is my road to hopefully becoming a chef.” The photography career, in other words, has been locked away in the dark room and a new path awaits.
The New York Post is reporting each episode costs $100,000 a pop and needs a staff of 62 to get off the ground. These kinds of numbers are more usually lumped in with flying on a private jet than making 10-minute clips that could be off the bog-standard YouTuber factory line. I’d hazard a guess that most of the cash has been spent on the music budget: the slicing and dicing and even the walking is all set to a dizzying array of trap beats and fuel-injected club bangers. To listen to, this isn’t a cooking show, it’s the latest Fast and Furious movie.
Brooklyn is a rather sweet presence on screen: there is more than a touch of the poor-wee-lamb about him, as though he knows he’s blagging and might only be doing this to pay off gambling debts. Or, if you’re my harsher colleague: “He’s such a simpleton.”
Apparently this entire cooking malarkey was born from lockdown, when he began fiddling with pots and pans and decided to make a go of it. This, to me, reeks of an understandable albeit delusional Lockdown Mistake, akin to buying a Peloton and thinking it was time to have a crack at the Tour de France.
The downside of bagging a show on the basis that mum and dad are famous, and on a subject that only became interesting to you in circumstances when 90 per cent of other distractions were off the table, is this: pretty soon both knowledge and talent run out. And there are hints that Brooklyn’s love of food is perhaps less like his dad’s — David is often spotted hanging out with chefs — and more in line with mum’s. Victoria, her husband told a podcast recently, has for 25 years eaten nothing but grilled fish and steamed vegetables. “The only time she’s probably ever shared something that’s been on my plate was actually when she was pregnant with Harper,” he continued, “and it was the most amazing thing. It was one of my favourite evenings.” Having a bit of something nicked off yer plate? One. Of. His. Favourite. Evenings. Christ.
Still, whether the passion is authentic or not is moot. Brooklyn’s fake-it-til-you-bake-it approach does have its moments, mostly because they are funny, although again, whether this is intentional or not is up for debate. And while his chefs — say Nobu Matsuhisa, or Pizzeria Mozza’s Nancy Silverton — are evidently as patient as they are talented, it could be that Brookers got it into his his head that he’s a kitchen whizz because his circle of mates seem so clueless about food that you half expect one of them to wander in, pick up a carrot and go: “What’s this? Beef?”
The Nobu episode is a particularly good one to get started with. Soon after the great chef lends Brooklyn a set of whites to a bafflingly ecstatic response, Brooklyn proudly tells Matsuhisa that one of his “passions” is collecting knives, which sounds much better on a TV show than it would on the back of a night bus. Matsuhisa picks one up: “This is famous,” he says. “Oh yeah?” says a nonplussed Brooklyn, who may never have actually seen his collection before. Later comes the heartbreaking revelation that the dear child went without sushi until 13, which presumably these days would be considered child abuse. Nobu was his first introduction to the great Japanese style, he tells the camera, lip all but quivering. It’s an emotional moment (it’s not).
Later, at home, Brooklyn is joined by extravagantly-eyelined actor Asante Blackk, whose passions don’t extend to knife hoarding but do include referring to himself with the Royal we. “This might be the day sushi change my life,” says Blackk, a fantasist. His is the surefooted certainty of a man who appears to believe that sushi’s revelatory powers one day come for us all.
Brooklyn gamely teaches him how to cut things — apparently, it involves pushing a knife through stuff. The knife needn’t be famous. Later, the concept of dicing a vegetable is unpacked not once but three times (“Like, really small,” says our helpful football heir).
While it’s not all plain-sailing — at one point Blackk likens Beckham’s fried sushi rice to rice krispies and Brooklyn lets out a “ha ha” that sounds almost identical to “fuck off” — there is a palpable sense Brookyln is enjoying himself, treating the basics of cooking as little, mind-blowing magic tricks. While his advice seems, shall we say, contrary to what might be expected (“The most important thing is to make mistakes,” he says. Later: “That’s the thing about being a chef — always messy!” Don’t tell Food Hygiene), there is a sense of fun here.
Sure, the staginess is sometimes awkward, like the time he tells Nancy Silverton how lovely it is to meet her, and she promptly launches into a story about the first time they met which, to be clear, is not now. But Beckham is sweet, wanting to learn, and clearly wrapped up in his new project. We’re watching him learn, while learning ourselves that he has no female friends (all of his guests, barring chefs, are male. Is the fiance the jealous type?). Now, are there thousands of chefs out there who might resent Brooklyn for landing a show for which he arguably has no suitability? Sure. But that’s their fault, isn’t it? Should have picked different parents.
