One of the major changes to Saturday morning TV schedules has been the move from children’s programmes to today’s new rock and roll; people cooking things. No more Saturday Morning Swap Shop if you were a prim and proper middle class child or, in my case, TisWas if you were from the great unwashed. You could choose between a show where the guest would be Cliff Richard or the music would be Sex Pistols. Perhaps, today’s children have other things to do on a Saturday morning, like living. I can’t imagine they’d been watching what passes for entertainment these days.
Both main channels have the same show with a different name. A celebrity chef cooking stuff and at the same time chatting to other alleged celebrities. This morning, I found myself tuning in to ITV.
The host was James Martin and he cooked something meaty while interviewing a man with long dreadlocks who I didn’t recognise and a beautiful blonde woman I also didn’t recognise. The sketch ended with Martin and his guests chomping their way through some food, but what got me was the fact that they had been boozing throughout the show. I mean, I am partial to a drop, but I am loathe to uncork a bottle of wine at half ten in the morning. Surely the only time morning drinking is allowed is when you are at the airport and drinking is actually compulsory?
I must admit that there was a time when I enjoyed cooking shows on the TV, like Ready Steady Cook, anything with Keith Floyd in and Rick Stein too. But then it got silly and you could barely go for half an hour without there being a cookery show. And competitive cooking at that. In fact, the Bake Off shows became more popular than conventional telly. Never mind The X Factor or Strictly: let’s have a load of people in a tent baking cakes. How could it possibly fail? Naturally, it didn’t.
Leaving the telly on ITV, James Martin’s show has ended and there’s another cookery show on, featuring the less irritating one from Masterchef and a double-denim clad woman I don’t recognise. He is cutting up prawns and some green stuff and it is monumentally dull. My feeling is that there are probably very few people avidly writing down the ingredients and instructions. It’s cooking as entertainment. Next week, we will have pro-celebrity ironing and a new chat show revolving around cleaning the shitter. That’s surely the next Big Idea? Household chores as entertainment. I could be onto something here.
