Cooking hell...

"I've been here before. Hundreds of times." Talking just before the results were announced, Barry McGuigan was under the impression that working in a kitchen to try and win, erm, nothing as the winner of Hell's Kitchen was the same as a prize fight in which, as you knock out your oponent, you are crowned Champion of the World. He wouldn't be allowed to hit Adele. He would, however, be allowed to mash potato. Which, in Barry's addled mind, might be comparable to the time he took Eusebio Pedroza in the seventh, or Bernard Taylor in the ninth, or Danilo Cabrera in the 14th. Still, we must remember that Barry's back catalogue includes appearing in a boxercise video with Samantha Fox called Fighting Fit. "This was really physically demanding," said a kitchen whites-clad victorious Barry, who once fought - and lost - a fifteen round World title fight against Stevie Cruz in the death-inducing heat of the Las Vegas desert. After that fight Barry had to go to the hospital, this time around he'll no doubt be recovering from his gruelling oven-based workout by doing a photoshoot for Heat magazine. Barry winning Hell's Kitchen was, at least from my armchair, a certainty by the end of the first week of this two week pig's trotter dehairing exercise. Barry had the eye of the tiger from day one. Poor Adele. There was a woman who wanted to win this show more than anything in the whole wide world. It was, she said, the best experience of her life, she'll never forget it, she's made some brilliant friends. She needs to get out more, obviously. Adele was a woman who many thought would be the next Jennifer Ellison, given that Jennifer was a soap star (Brookside) and Adele is a soap star (Emmerdale). Sadly, Adele would not taste victory this time around, and will not go on to have a big cosmetically enhanced bust and be a lads' mag starlet like Jennifer. That honour goes, instead, to Barry McGuigan, the undisputed winner of Hell's Kitchen 2007, an inspiration to us all, a man that shows that life goes on and on and on and on and on long after you've reached the very pinnacle of your chosen profession. Who needs a big wide belt to hold aloft when you can cook a sheperd's pie, eh?

Tags: Hell's Kitchen, reality tv

Belting...

Ooh, Hell's Kitchen - Barry and Adele in the final. I want Barry to win but expect that Adele will carry off the...erm...what exactly do they win? Barry will be hoping it's a big belt, I should think, and maybe Adele could do with a new belt too. So, that's decided, it's a belt. I shall let Marco know asap.

In other news, the recent Killing Time podcast that nobody's bothering to listen to is now listed amongst some proper ones on iTunes, and you can check out the glamorous listing here.

And Hull FC, top four finish. Well done. Maybe it's just me but I think that they're peaking at exactly the right time. Huddersfield at home now on Friday as the march to the Grand Final commences.

Bye bye Jim Davidson. Don't come back.

"I think I better leave."
"This is what I mean. Gay means as good as you."
"Why do shirt-lifters all pull the same face?"
"I don't see why there was any offence there."

Words of wisdom from Jim Davidson, a comedian from a different generation, when it was acceptable to be a complete and utter c*nt, a racist (they were all at it back then, you ask Charlie Williams), a homophobe, a misogynist. Times changed, Jim went on to entertain the troops, do his 'blue' pantos and front some mainstream telelvision. But one day, he would rise again, his bigoted views intact.

"Why can't I have a point of view? Why can't I say what I think?"
Because it's wrong, you're wrong, you stupid, stupid man.

Did Jim leave? Not under his own steam. He was asked to leave. Hurrah. May he never appear on television ever again. A victory for common sense and decency.

Tags: reality tv, Hell's Kitchen, bigotry

When the dust settles...

Rather quiet in Queens Gardens today. Shame.

I have done a fair amount of watching this weekend - The Paddingtons may not have entered my field of vision as planned but I watched England win, I watched the X-Factor, I watched Hell's Kitchen. My, how I love that last one. Like Brian Dowling, I wished that Jim Davidson would just get the f**k out of the kitchen. But some people - Ziggy from Big Brother is another - just don't know how to quit, do they? They just talk about it, and then, unfortunately, stay. Jim, stood there in his suit reading from his notes and then sitting with a scycophantic Marco Pierre White (surely the last remaining Jim Davidson fan in existence) reminded me of quite a few people I've worked with over the years. I hate it here, I hate everything about it, I will say something I regret. Leave then. Say something you regret, it doesn't really matter. But they never do. I imagine that not only will Jim Davidson attempt to stay once he's been evicted (sometime soon, surely), he will also remain as they're striking the set and he'll still be there come the next series. In fact, he'll be haunting this show in the afterlife, where he'll also still be a racist and a homophobe and still be harping on about how the PC brigade did for him, rather than his tiny, ignorant mind.

Meanwhile, now the dust has settled over the riverside, you can see what a few high explosives can do to an old mill. Quite a nice clean break, quite a hefty pile of rubble, still a fair amount of building to blow up.

Tags: Hull, live music, Hell's Kitchen, reality tv

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.