The heat is on...

The void left by Big Brother has been filled, almost immediately, by Hell's Kitchen. It is a kitchen-based tour de force, dumping all over the Beeb's gastronomic pretender to the throne The Restaurant. Gordon's gone, of course, to be replaced by his old mentor and rock 'n' roll chef Marco Pierre White. Marco looks incredibly dirty and I'm expecting food and hygiene officers to burst in at any minute to demand that he sort his wayward hair out, get a shave and make sure that there are no traces of pig's trotters under his fingernails. But there's no denying that Marco is incredibly inspirational and also, bless him, completely unhinged. What a marvellous psychotic stare he has. As for the celebs, well, Jim Davidson seems to be attempting to do a Les Dennis and go on a very public journey of self-discovery bordering on the nervous breakdown, although where Les is a truly nice chap at heart, Jim is a racist, homophobic scumbag. Yet, in the first episode, I really thought Jim had the capacity to change. "I realise that everything I have attempted in my life is shit," he said, prompting me to think that he'd finally grasped what the bulk of people in the country had been thinking about him for years. But then he went and ruined it, by adding, "Apart from my comedy." All the female celebs look as if they'll be bursting into tears within the week, Paul Young is oozing a quiet arrogance born out of his (as yet unmentioned and probably won't be) Celebrity Masterchef appearance, Barry McGuigan has the eye of the tiger and, unless I'm mistaken and have been misreading the two-shots, is sizing Marco up before launching the kind of physical attack that won him a few belts in the ring. And what's with Lee Ryan? He appears to have been swatting up on foie gras and pigeons to such an extent that he keeps feeling the need to give bizarre, half-baked lectures to camera. Perfect television, all of it.