Campaigning genius
Jamie’s Ministry of Food (Channel 4, Tuesday); Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails (BBC4, Thursday)
It was worth it, anyway — first for the great ice-breaking scene where Jamie had to apologise for calling her a fat old scrubber, and later for the scenes where she told Jamie that his plan to teach the whole of Rotherham to cook using a pyramid training scheme was doomed to fail. ‘They’ll be all eager when you’re there because they’ll want to suck up to you,’ she explained. ‘Soon as you’re gone, though, they’ll go, “I can’t be doing with this.”’
In TV-land this is known as ‘jeopardy’ and all reality-style documentaries must display it, by adamantine TV-commissioning law.
This is why you know that when halfway through Jamie seems to be making progress — cue heartwarming footage of malnourished northern folk, who don’t even know how to boil water, blossoming as they cook their first-ever dinner (meatballs) — there will be a setback after the next ad break. Sure enough it came when Jamie’s star pupil — a photogenic young blonde housewife — tearfully told him she couldn’t afford the time or expense of making proper food any more. His other pupils agreed. ‘Told you so,’ said Julie. And suddenly Jamie was made to look like the rich, poncy southerner with fancy ideas which could never possibly survive the journey north of the Watford Gap. How will he get out of this one? Find out next week, when...etc.
Part of me does resent being manipulated in this way. Unfortunately, after two decades of relentless dumbing down, most viewers have been so moronified that they can’t cope with nuance of any kind. They want to slob down on their sofa, switch off their brains, be cattle-prodded into the right emotional responses (up, down; sad, happy), then go to bed. I would protest except I’m just the same. I can’t even get through my boxed sets of The Wire. Too talky and muffled, too complicated. Jamie (and Bruce Parry and University Challenge) are all the TV I need.
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George
October 2nd, 2008 6:42pmIan Hislop is easy to read. He craves approval, but at the same time is repelled by it.
That's why he laughs all the time at his own jokes. (When Nigella Lawson pointed this out, he responded to a woman who quite clearly frightened him to death with: 'it's like eating your own food'.
If you were a very small, small boy who also looked odd and were put in the public school system, you might end up like Hislop.
Being picked when quite young to be editor of Private Eye so you can get back at every one is very heaven to someone like this.
TDK
October 5th, 2008 6:26pmYou know that no government, the Conservatives who appointed Beeching or Labour who implemented the vast majority of the closures, had to actually implement his proposal. If was wrong, it was the politicians who got it wrong.