Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Decline of Ramsay
You've got to hand it to Gordon Ramsay, he's managed to shock the Australians with a display of uncouth sexism - no mean feat, believe me I've tried. Sadly, he has had to climb down, which makes him a bit of a prat going up and a worse one coming down. It's a pity he's become such a jerk, he was a good chef once and that used to be a job with gravitas. Mind you, so was Prime Minister.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Incidentally, I believe Kitchen Nightmares to be one of TV's best programmes on business - The Apprentice not even being in the category. As such, Ramsay was better suited to be 'Enterprise Tsar' than Shuggs (that is, along with the other thousand-plus businessmen cited in your previous post on this topic).
ReplyDeleteTrue enough for the first couple of series, Gaw. But he massively jumped the shark when he crossed the Pond. The format is even more rigid than House.
ReplyDeleteWorm - I think all the remaining bogans might actually be in the cricket team.
Brit, very true - the across the pond ones make your skin crawl. Re bogans: don't you mean the remaining bogan has just been kicked out of the Aussie cricket team?
ReplyDeleteWhilst never being one not to enjoy grub I have never been able to understand why cooks have been elevated to the stratosphere, rocket science it ain't, art it ain't, its a craft skill, like armature winding, of course no toff ever became a winder.
ReplyDeleteWhat it has attracted, ever since the sixties, is a large dollop of snobishness, having the chef call you by name causing oodles of pride swelling.
That much of the recent output of television companies has consisted of some bod or burd stood over a frying pan, spatula in hand, talking utter tosh is beyond a joke.
The king is very much in the altogether.
I find him unwatchable now. Something seems to have gone very badly wrong with Ramsay, from his mid-life crisis highlighted hair to the well-deserved public kicking he just got from his own mother (see the Daily Mail online and, yes, I'm blushing as I type these words). So sad, because I once had a brief chat with him at Aubergine when it was going ballistic. He was charming, excited to be in the thick of it and utterly in control.
ReplyDeleteHe may have been able to cook but I've always found his verbal style unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteget back to the kitchen where you belong, Ramsay!
ReplyDeletesurely there's some other occupational group we have yet to make celebrities out of. Celebrity librarians - have we done those?
No fan of Ramsay's but your PM dig is pathetic.
ReplyDeleteWasn't he just born to massively jump sharks. Appears to be unable to stand still at all which must be dreadful and make gravitas difficult.
ReplyDeleteNever watched Ramsay as I don't tolerate his language and aggressiveness.
ReplyDeleteBut nearly all British celebrity cooks have progressed to being irritating and/or offensive now. Jamie Oliver seems to want to turn his shows into soap about his life (and, as I understand, recently featured in a studio pig masturbation scene. Way to keep it classy, Great Britain!)
Nigella's breasts and finger licking don't hold fascination forever, and montage sequences showing friends over for a jolly party at the end of any cooking show is always irritating.
The only British celebrity chef I have time for now is Rick Stein, but probably because his shows have become more gastronomic travelogue and commentary rather than about cooking per se.
One old fashioned cooking show I do like now is on US cable: Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Getting Italian grandma cooking lessons with her family occasionally popping for a cameo is really quite pleasant.
I suppose we have all the "Justin's" and the "Crispin's"
ReplyDeletein the T.V. commissioning departments to blame for Ramsay and his ilk. They seem to think he's some kind of amusing savage that they can trot out like some Victorian Circus Manager whenever they want. Trouble is these people don't actually watch T.V.