It’s possible that Jamie Oliver’s production company did not perform an exhaustive auditioning process before hiring the host of their new CBBC show. In Cooking Buddies, a teen presenter meets someone who is roughly his own age and teaches them how to cook a dish, which they then make for their family. In return, the guest gives the presenter a crash course in their favourite hobby. That presenter is Buddy Oliver, a 13-year-old food YouTuber who is also Jamie’s son.
Cookery telly is already disproportionately Oliver-flavoured, to some viewers’ distaste. Now there is a new generation of cheeky chappy to contend with, and a new “nepo baby” to discuss. But, sadly for those ready to dump on Cooking Buddies, it points up the flipside of the idea that flooding our culture with the children of the famous – and more broadly with the children of the rich, who can afford a creative freedom that is increasingly denied to the less well-off – is corrosively unfair. That this is true and should, generally, be resisted does not necessarily mean that the posh kids’ projects stink, and Cooking Buddies works just fine.
