There was a huge blow for Gordon Ramsay on Tuesday morning with news that his culinary version of The Apprentice had been taken off the BBC ’s menu.
What made it worse was that, in deciding that Future Food Stars had no future, the Beeb helped poor Gordon complete a hat trick of binned shows.
Luckily, solace arrived that evening with the return of ITV1’s Cooking with the Stars, which allowed Gordon to sit back and say: “No matter how badly things are going, at least I’m not one of the chefs on this dog’s dinner.” Or words to that effect.
The cheffing short straws here were drawn by Jean-Christophe Novelli, Rosemary Shrager and six other people who apparently cook for a living.
These eight hob-botherers were paired with eight celebrities, some of whom you may recognise from their day jobs or from one of the other celebrity cooking or reality shows.
It was all held together by two presenters, Emma Willis and Tom Allen, who took it in turns to be superfluous.
If you’re won-dering why ITV is shelling out for two presenters when one would do, there’s a simple answer: Marks & Spencer is helping with the bill.
Hence the endless M&S adverts in the breaks, the not-so-subtle plugs for M&S products during the show and the hostage video after the end credits in which Emma and Tom’s mouths say “You can buy all tonight’s food in M&S or on Ocado” while their eyes scream “Please don’t harm my family!” Nothing wrong with a commercial network doing a deal with a retail giant, of course.
The problem is CWTS still has the whiff of those cheap and tacky shopping channel demonstrations that we all like to laugh at.
The difference being there’s not much here to raise a smile.
So you end up making your own entertainment.
Like when someone mutters “really, really dense” as Peter Andre serves his pasta dish and you wonder whether they’re talking about him or his gnocchi. That does help pass the time, for sure.
I don’t think it’ll keep me going for six weeks though.
