TV: Channel Four's going down the saucepan Part 2

PART TWO. (Part one here)

The first part of this post was a right old rant about Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey. Not them, you understand, but their TV output and their swearing and the illusion of pressure they like to create so that they can swear like Billy-O before 9pm.

I mean, I don't mind swearing. I don't even mind gratuitous swearing you stinking fucker! See? What I don' t like though, what gets right up my hooter, is the creation of a fictional need for swearing, and Channel 4's complicity in the fictionalisation, the narrative-lisation, of just about every form of telly bar the news. We dumb viewers, we can't watch the box if there ain't no story can we, 'cause you know that's really boring like. We get bored, don't we?

I don't know when this started, this Where's The Story shit, but, to keep in the genre, I remember feeling, as a younger man, slightly uneasy at some of the banter between The Crafty Chef and Chris Kelly in BBC2's Food And Drink (Not their right names? I could care less! Or not. I'm fucked if I understand what that means to an American).

Fans will remember that at the end of the show, Mr Huff and Puff the cook would just finish adding cream to a big frying pan of something when the bloke from Clapperboard would appear on his shoulder, looking for a taste.

"Hello," the Crafty Cook would say, "here he is," with mock exasperation. As if to say 'No sooner do I finish adding a knob of butter to gloss the sauce before old fucking greedy guts turns up wanting a slobber off my spoon.' You're not wrong Crafty, he does do it and every week too: that's because it's the same show every week, with the same joke, and the same fucking format, and it's a food programme for fuck sake, he's bound to want a fucking taste!
This continued right through Food And Drinks re-invention, when they used to film it round Anthony Worral-Thompson's gaff (name incorrectly spelled? Really, I couldn't give a monkey's.)
AWT, as he styles himself, would be at the window of his giant kitchen when the wine-bloke off the old Food And Drink (the one who made Jilly look gorgeous) would arrive on his bike.
"Here he is," AWT would squirt, sounding a bit peeved that baldy's turned up.
Well of course he's turned up Anthony, you planned it six whole weeks ago, he works on the programme too, don't you fucking remember?
So all this, all this food and make believe brings me to all things River Cottage; The View From The River Cottage; River Cottage Forever; River Cottage Needs A New Roof; River Cottage: Pig Hunt!

Here's a slice of rural life, and here's plucky Hugh making cakes for fifty peasants in the annual village gypsy hunt cake competition. Hugh spends so much time entertaining so many hundreds of the feudal poor, with a few toffs stuck in for balance, it's a wonder he's got anytime for making jam, let alone selling it!

But phew, worry not. Looks like Hugh's roadside berry marmalade has been a great success and he's only gone and managed to sell out the lot again! That'll keep River Cottage warm over winter, that's for sure!

Yes, when he's not slaughtering his own animals, or shooting wild ones, there's nothing Hugh Fearnly Wittingstall (see above) likes better than making a tidy sum at a local farmers market, selling his crafty and frugal homemade soups, jams, conserves, pickles, burgers, fishcakes, whatever and everything: you name it, he'll fucking sell it.

It's a hard life being a small-holder, but Hugh has clearly demonstrated that if you work hard, use every natural resource available to you, especially the free food that is nature's bounty, it is possible to eat well and to eat from local suppliers, thus helping the environment and the economy in a oncer.

Of course when it comes to selling jam, it doesn't half help your sales if there's a TV crew filming you. Yes Hugh, I admire you your ability to turn tidy profits at fun fairs, village fetes, harvest festivals and badger-baiting, but it's all a bit of a lark really isn't it?

Hugh, let's be honest. It doesn't matter if you sell a gallon of nettle soup and make £30: you're getting paid thousands and thousands for being on telly, and for your books, and your newspaper stuff, and River Cottage is probably a tourist attraction, generating more and more money, and Channel 4 probably have a whole channel set-aside for you and your curly-locked money making antics so you can make more and more money pretending to be so very concerned not to waste a single penny that all your mates got pig-cock pipes for Christmas last year.

Let's stop pretending; let's all just stop it. Channel 4 and their cash-happy chefs think we're fucking fools and we just can't take it any more.