Ce...leb...ri...ty...Ma...

Argh, bloody BBC iPlayer. Or maybe it's tonight's wi-fi broadband experience. Suffice to say that, as I sit here attempting to watch Celebrity MasterChef, my experience is ruined because it is only playing four syllables-worth of kitchen-based action at a time. And no wonder that David Platt went off the rails - his stepfather (otherwise known as the actor Sean Wilson) appears to have been buggering about perfecting his French food technique for several years.

Listening: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend / Dizzee Rascal - That's Not My Name (Live Lounge)

Brown fishy...

Hah. Nicholas De Lacey Brown couldn't work out the price of fish and was sent packing by Sir Alan of Sugar. Example De Lacey Brownisms:

"I am very into art and culture. I find it very difficult to have conversations about football."
"I find it hard to get on with people that are less privileged and less cultured than me."
"I feel like the barrier that's been drawn is between the educated and the more kind of gritty salesmen."

An artist, a barrister, a brilliant musician. And an absolute nob.

Surely bullshitting Raef will be the next 'boy' to leave.

Once upon a time apprenticeships lasted seven years. Then along came Sir Alan...

The Apprentice line-up has been announced. There is an air of familiarity about the new bunch that Sir Alan has assembled: a single mother, a champion show-jumper, a self-confessed tomboy, a descendant of African royalty, the daughter of a millionaire, a woman who shares a Guinness World Record with her siblings for their impressive array of degrees, a former member of the Royal Artillery, a boxing ball-dancer, a software sales manager, a bank manager and a former debating champion who claims never to have lost an argument. It sounds like Extreme Monty Python. I already have a favourite - 24-year old Nicholas De Lacy Brown, a barrister, artist (in the vein of Salvador Dali with Crayola Crayons) and property developer. Poor lad, he's been telling the media that "from the moment I was born I knew I was destined for great things." Sadly, that's so obviously not going to be the case but at least he's on a reality TV show. I reckon Lee McQueen might be the first one to be sacked, given that he appears to be completely insane, describing himself as a cat and, according to The Times (no doubt via a BBC press release): "sometimes purring with perfection and at other times just biting".

F**king Gordon...

I have often spoken here of my love of Gordon Ramsay. He's a funny bloke. A f**king funny bloke. And I love his television appearances. But this new series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has been a rather annoying combination of new episodes and rehashes of previous culinary catastrophes. "Tonight," says the link announcer, "the new series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares continues with a brand new episode." A brand new episode? You'd think that would be the very least you'd expect from a new series. But Channel 4 seem to have lost the plot. I realise that Gordon's a busy man, f**king and blinding his way through a lot of television commitments in between overseeing Gordon Ramsay Holdings. But I'd have preferred to wait until a genuine full series of Nightmares was ready, even if it meant hanging on for anther 12 months, than having to endure this piece meal offering. But no, that's not the modern way. Even tonight's brand new episode was a let down, with Gordon more involved in marriage counselling a couple of shouty, stumpy, grubby looking Welsh folk rather than turning their kitchen around. When they revisit this one in next year's new series I won't bother watching it again.

Tags: reality tv, Gordon Ramsay

Tangfastic...

Made the brave move of mixing with some crowds Christmas shopping. We didn't mingle for long. My, they're a miserable bunch, these 21st century shoppers, and they don't appear capable of seeing that the baby carrier you're lugging around actually contains a baby. Here's a tip: if you really hate shopping so much that you must push your way past everything even when it's not strictly necessary, and you must do it all with a downturned mouth, why not tell your friends and family that, actually, present buying isn't for you and that they'll have to go without? And what is it with these men that disassociate themselves from their partners during the shopping excursion, walking several feet ahead and then just stopping, sighing and breathing heavily, waiting for 'er that should be kept indoors and cookin' tea to catch up, before doing it all again? We were happy to get back to base, and I'm now unwinding by sitting in front of Sky News and eating Tangfastic, sweets every bit as sour as those shopping in Hull today.

Well done Biggins, the new King of the Jungle, who semed genuinely touched that viewers cared enough about him to pick up their phones and vote. Nice bit on the Reuters wire about Biggins' route to victory:

Biggins was given the "bushtucker bonanza" in which he ate a witchetty grub, crocodile's foot, three cockroaches, a kangaroo penis and a kangaroo testicle.

"I'm really a breast man," he joked while eating the penis.

I never had any Evel Knievel toys. But the spoilt kid that lived next door but one had the entire collection and I was allowed to play with them occasionally. The toys were pretty realistic - the stunts never quite went to plan, the little plastic Evel always fell off mid-air and the whole lot usually came crashing down to the floor with a few bits scattering in different directions. The real thing always struck me as a bit of a bumbling fool, mainly due to one of the most enduring memories of my childhood, which was sitting in front of the old Redifusion telly in 1975 watching EK jump 13 double-decker buses at the old Wembley and landing pretty miserably, breaking his pelvis in the process befored telling the crowd that he would be retiring (he would be, but six years and a few more broken bones later). So he's now riding on the big motorcyle in the sky and I'm expecting him to land awkwardly any second. RIP you crazy loon.

Tags: Biggins, reality tv, Evel Knievel, shopping

Bugged out...

M watching I'm A Celebrity: "It's cruel to eat bugs". She's right. Where are the Bugs' Rights Protestors?

Tags: reality tv

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.