The problem for me is that many of these programmes have turned into caricatures of themselves. I can put up with Bake Off because it's largely about ordinary people but then we move to Masterchef and many of the other similar programmes. The chef judges seem to be full of their own importance and don't get me started on Greg Wallace who I'm sure is a very nice man but who just seems to speak in an aggressive way that, after a short time, becomes tiresome.
In the end the programmes are not so much about food as about personalities with everyone referring to each other as "chef."
Let's face it the food that they produce is pseud in the extreme and not the kind of thing most of us would ever be faced with. My main problem is that it takes food as an artform rather than as something that you need for nutrition and to keep you alive. Now I'm not suggesting it is wrong to have art on a plate but when I have a meal I want to come away feeling nicely full and with a rosy glow and not to have to pay a large amount of money to feel almost as empty as when I started.
On Breakfast television recently one of the presenters had made mince pies. Let's just say they didn't come out quite as expected. In fact the host of the cooking programme that followed rather took the pee out of them.
Ok they may have been misshapen and not look perfect, but I bet they tasted just as good as the perfectly shaped ones that the so called "professionals" produced and to be blunt they all go down the same way and come out the same way!
Mind you the other side of this is the way certain dishes have gone from being "special" into horrible junk food. Just think about pizzas. I can remember when I lived in Beccles there was a new Italian pizza restaurant owned by somebody I got to know pretty well. Vittorio had been an Italian commissioner in London before moving to Suffolk and opening the restaurant with his wife.
They produced the best and most authentic pizzas I have ever tasted. Sadly the restaurant closed after a couple of years due to the introduction of very cheap pizzas to other restaurants and of course to supermarkets. These couldn't hold a candle to Vittorio's authentic Italian pizzas but they were half the price and as many argued "a pizza is just a pizza" which of course isn't true. There are good pizzas and bad pizzas. Same with fish and chips. At their best there is nothing better, at their worst they can be horrible. Had some in Holt at the weekend. The chips were individual and didn't dissolve into a mush and the fish was well cooked with light batter. Get bad fish and chips and the chips mangle together and the fish is over cooked and dry.
And finally we have burgers. There's a world of difference between takeaway cheap burgers and proper gourmet burgers. During the summer we went to a food event on King's Head Meadow in Wymondham and I had what was referred to as "a proper job". This was not just a burger, this was a proper job burger full of salad, whopping amounts of meat, pickles and a massive bun - one of those things that when you handled, was so full of juices that it fell apart and had to be eaten with a knife and fork.
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Was very sad to hear of the passing of golf commentator Peter Alliss who has died at the age of 89.
We are fast losing what I would term "off the wall" personality sports commentators. Men who know their sports inside out and can commentate and convey their love of the sport but in a very human and amusing way. All the great commentators have had this ability. Men like John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld and Ritchie Benaud (cricket), Ted Lowe (snooker) and many more. You hung on their very words. There seems to be so few left. It's almost as if today's commentators come off a conveyer belt. The one exception is David "Bumble" Lloyd who commentates on cricket with a beautiful madness that will see him break into reminiscences, talk about day to day events and even break into song. Bumble is living the sport as part of his life and he draws us beautifully into that life.
Cricket of course is a relatively slow sport that lends itself to asides and chat but sadly I feel that commentators like Peter Alliss are becoming a thing of the past.
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As I mentioned yesterday we spent the weekend in North Norfolk and today's photographs come from Cromer. Hope you enjoy at least some of them.
Do you remember last year when Cromer was featured on the BBC Christmas advert? That seems so long ago. Hopefully by this time next year we will all have received vaccination against Covid and it will be a thing of the past.
Tomorrow I will be talking about my memories of Coronation Street from its very first episode to the present day as it marks its 60th birthday - which isn't bad for something that was only expected to last a few weeks.