Man Behind the Mask

This week, the marketing push for Jamie’s Ministry of Food kicked off. Unfortunately for the producers- Jamie Oliver was at the forefront.

He very kindly confirmed pretty much everything this blog has ever accused him of in his interview with Paris Match. From the reaction; it seems that the mainstream is catching up and seeing Oliver for what he is. This is great news- as viewers have been forewarned of his attitude. As we have repeatedly pointed out- the premise Ministry of Food is built on is very shaky indeed. Before his mask slipped- many punters would have given the chubby cherub the benefit of the doubt. Now, he has spunked his get out of jail free card to cosy up to the French.

Today, there was a good piece by Brendan O’Neil in The Guardian.

Roasting the masses:
Jamie Oliver’s outburst against slovenly Brits shows what lies behind food snobbery – actual snobbery

Read it here.

O’Neil writes for www.spiked-online.com . If you read this blog regularly- you will find it a thought provoking site. If you are one of the Jamie fans that end up here by accident- don’t bother: it will upset you and make your head hurt..

In the article, O’Neil quotes from a chat did on the Channel 4 website around the time of School Dinners. This was another one of the rare occasions when his PR team allowed him to say what he really thinks. As well as calling us “white trash”- he came out with this pearl of wisdom:

“one of the biggest problems with food in general is that most of the effects of processed, cheap, crap food, which probably represents 70% of food eaten in this country, mainly has long-term slow and consistent effects on the mind, body and soul.”

Ignore the usual made up statistic and hearsay science- check the end.

The Soul.

If you don’t eat what Jamie tells you to- it will damage your soul.

Mull that one over.

Read Full Rantings of a Deluded Tosser

All this has come at a tricky time for Jamie’s Ministry of Food. 16 days away from the grand finale- and…it don’t look like it’s going to be that grand. If you live in Rotherham- you already know the impact of the campaign has been less than massive. The goal posts are already being moved and the criteria for calling Ministry of Food a success are being lowered by the day. Unfortunately for Jamie- some of us have been paying attention all along.

 

No Blackmail

Blinded by the Honk

Blinded by his love of honk- Jamie just can’t stop shooting his mouth off.

Latest salvo against the working class

Jamie was talking to Paris Match. He wants to shoot a TV series in France (new found love of French cuisine or strong Euro- you decide)- so he ingratiated himself with the natives by giving his own country a kicking. If you follow the link- you’ll see that many Telegraph readers agree with him.

The key section is:

“Commenting on the fact that 80 per of the British do not even bother sitting round a table for dinner any more, Oliver says: “It’s true in the centre of London and in the big northern cities. It’s linked to the new poverty.”

Regular readers will spot two classic Oliver tactics.  First- the made up statistic. Second- being very careful not to upset the core audience of suburbanites who buy his books.

They say they love Britain but they hate the People of Britain

They can nod along and feel self important. They see themselves the real British people. Those Northerners and inner city types are scum who leech of them. They can ignore issues that mean mean they would have to change their selfish lifestyles, like rampant car use and lack of exercise, and take comfort they are better than us. They look down on us. They despise us.

Jamie even says we’re worse than Africans- the ultimate insult from a Home Counties Tory.

This is exactly why the Pilsbury Dough Boy is coming to Rotherham- so that his core ABC1 book buyers know he is not on about them.

In March a Daily Mail article on the show was headlined

Jamie Oliver to teach the poor how to cook ‘the basics’ in town where mums opposed his school dinners campaign

The Poor (substitute the scum, the scroungers, the thick)

Our town has been chosen to represent The Poor. Don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. They hate us and this show is here to make money for Oliver and entertain his core viewers.

If you think anything else- you are a mug.

If you are down with Jamie- I hope that you back him by orgnising a boycott of his Dad’s pub. I also hope that you will join his campaign against rampant consumerism by picketing Sainsbury’s Savacentres.

Beer is ace. It is an important part of Rotherham culture. Watch any of Jamie’s shows and then watch:

this short film about a quiet drink and a meal in Rotherham town centre.

I know which I think looks more fun.

 

No Blackmail

Big Mouth Strikes Again

The marketing campaign for Jamie’s Ministry of Food project is underway. Like his beloved supermarkets, Oliver starts pushing the Xmas tat early and the move to get ‘Jamie’s Ministry of Food: Anyone Can Learn to Cook in 24 Hours’ into your stocking is on.

Jamie kicked off his season of promotion with a Q & A at the Edinburgh festival. You will probably have heard about his controversial comments when trying to laugh off criticism of his Fowl Dinners show.

Jamie Insults Germans

As we have seen repeatedly, without the benefit of extensive editing, Vicky Pollard features spews out a flow of nonsense. The Holocaust headlines were the only coverage his Edinburgh talk received in most papers. The exception was The Guardian but, as they had promoted the event, they unquestioningly repeated his ramblings.

Here are a few of the lowlights- with some fair and balanced commentary.

“Oliver, speaking in a one-on-one interview session at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival today with Peter Bazalgette, said that his passion for “campaign telly” came at a high personal cost.
“Campaign telly is the hardest in the world to do. You’ve got to be sincere and it has to come from the heart. You can’t invent it,” he added.

He said that Channel 4 show Jamie’s School Dinners had cost him “personally” £350,000.”

It has to come from the heart? In this report, Jamie admitted he picks his projects by what sells with his core audience. He’s never going to tackle anything that could hit him in the pocket.

The idea that the show personally cost him £350,000 is total bollocks. If that’s the amount his highly profitable production company put into the show- then that’s not his personal money. I would find it surprising if a show that was such a hit would lose so much money. If Oliver means that he missed out on other earnings due to working on his “campaign telly”- then that is ridiculous.

Plenty of British people, certainly hundreds and possibly in the hundreds of thousands, can cook as well as Jamie Oliver. His entire success is based on him becoming popular through being on TV. Without TV exposure- a chef is not going to sell any books.

After School Dinners- Jamie Oliver was hailed as a national hero. His enhanced profile meant his books flew off the shelves and guaranteed the green light for any TV project with his name attached. Even if you believe he spent £350 k of his own honk- in marketing terms it would have been a snip. Do you think he would be in a position to open his chain of Italian  sub-Café Rouges or serve up excrement like Ministry of Food if School Dinners hadn’t happened?

“Oliver added that there was a scene in Jamie’s Kitchen that wife Jules did not want to appear in – and that she had not signed a release form – but “it got put in regardless”.

“Don’t bother signing release forms – they mean absolutely nothing,” he quipped.”

From the off, we’ve been warning people about the exploitative nature of this type of show. Those of you who are content to put your trust in Jamie may think again after hearing that. If he treats his wife with so little respect- what do you think he cares about a bunch of Northern monkeys?

“Oliver also elaborated on how his decade-long association with Sainsbury’s has, on at least two major occasions, threatened his wider media interests.

He was forced into making a public apology for rounding on Sainsbury’s for not publicly rallying to his battery hen cause, for the Channel 4 show Jamie’s Fowl Dinners at the start of 2008.

“Some supermarkets turned up, they didn’t,” he said, remaining defiant about making the outburst.

“At the end of the day my first and biggest employer, for 10 years now, is my public. If you lie to them that’s it. End of story,” Oliver added.

“It did get me in trouble [with Sainsbury's] … I’ve got a reasonably big mouth. Sometimes I felt like a chef and more often a professional shit stirrer.””

This is more like it. Jamie the folk hero- sticking it to the man. Unless you have any memory about what actually happened.  Jamie Oliver made a very mild comment about Sainsbury’s not backing an event.

Then, The Telegraph reported:

“The 32-year-old has … written an open letter to Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King saying: “I am happy to confirm what I have said on several occasions: that Sainsbury’s has the most to be proud of on this important animal welfare issue.

“I would not have continued working with Sainsbury’s for so many years if I did not believe that you were showing real leadership.”

On BBC Breakfast- he said:

“The passion for the subject got me in a pickle where it was able to go in papers and look like I was criticizing Sainsbury’s.”

“Sainsbury’s did do more than their bit and yes I was perturbed that they were not there at the live event purely and only because I knew it would look bad when they had no reason to look bad.”

 

See- Jamie’s employer is not the British public- it is the supermarket that pays him £1.2 a year. He says one bad word about them and he is forced to write a groveling public apology and drag his sorry ass round breakfast TV studios praising them to the rafters. That’s his version of remaining defiant. Hardly Tank Man in Tiananmen  Square is it? Backtracking one hundred percent on what was in his show. Do you think he will offer the same apologies to any of the people he misrepresents on his forthcoming show?

Now the dust has settled- it is in the interests of both Sainsbury’s and Jamie to play up his slightly bad boy image. It’s good for business and complements their current series of adverts.

“Oliver also elaborated on the nature of his departure from the BBC, for whom he made the early series of Naked Chef that made his name, because of corporation’s growing unease about his relationship with Sainsbury’s.

“I got sacked. I kind of did. They felt that the Sainsbury’s ads looked like the Naked Chef,” he said. “I wanted to stay but they wanted me to personally indemnify the programme.”

The BBC, Oliver added, wanted to be protected from any potential conflict of interest over future series arising from his Sainsbury’s relationship.

He said that in hindsight there is a much better fit with Channel 4 than BBC1 or BBC2.”

 

“I got sacked. I kind of did.”- Or put another way- the BBC pointed out that doing carbon copies of a show as adverts is a totally unacceptable practice. On being told this, Oliver shipped out and followed the money. His love of Sainsbury’s honk meant he slipped to a level where he was ridiculously over exposed. He only rescued the position by reinventing himself as a campaigner. He is now playing exactly the same trick- with Sainsbury’s feed your family for a fiver ad’s perfectly complementing Ministry of Food. After that “£350,000” marketing spend- he thinks the GBP will forgive him anything.

 

No Blackmail

TV Mind Warp

Television is an incredibly powerful medium.

 

We believe what it tells us unquestioningly because we see it with our own eyes in our own front room.

 

It talks to us when we are leaning back and relaxed. When reading a paper- we know it’s biased and the bullshit detector is ticking away. We trust telly. Telly entertains us at the end of a hard day. Anyway, I saw it with my own eyes.

 

TV documentaries are often put together to make a point. Take “The Poles are Coming”. This was on the BBC as part of the ‘White’ season. A generally well made piece- it looked at the impact of Polish immigration in the town of Peterborough. This being the ultra- liberal BBC, the underlying message was that Polish immigration has had a positive impact on the UK (something I agree with, but that’s irrelevant). The most memorable scene in the film was at the end. A camera was shoved into the face of local lads outside the Jobcentre. When challenged, all agreed with the statement- “There are no jobs because of the Poles nicking them all”. The programme maker then offered the lads minimum wage agricultural jobs. All turned them down and took big gulps from their cans of premium lager.

 

This was a very powerful image. I know this, because I have heard a number of people say:

“People in this country don’t want to work. I saw this thing on telly. All these kids were on about the Poles nicking their jobs- but when he said he could get them a start picking- none of ‘em wanted to know.”

 

Job done. It’s now in the national psyche that we need the Poles. OK- the woolly liberal on the decks may not have meant to fuel the cut benefits and put ‘em in the Army brigade- but they were only white working class kids so he won’t shed too many tears over them

 

If you think about this exercise- you soon realise it has nothing to do with the truth. I could go down to the Jobcentre with a video camera today and offer fifty people minimum wage jobs in the crappiest conditions. If I got three to accept them- I could edit it and make a short piece about how English people are desperate for work, but the immigrants are nicking all the jobs. If I got three Pakistani kids to accept- I could take the piece down a whole other sensationalist alley. Or- I could do what “The Poles are Coming” did. I could just ask the kids with the home made tattoos, fake Burberry caps and open cans of Stella. I mean- that’s what all working class kids are like isn’t it?

 

Two other celeb’s are famous for this kind of thing. The first example is Derren Brown. In his film- The System he exposed the way we can be manipulated as we trust what we see with our own eyes- even when it is a distorted version of reality. Although it was presented as a piece of gimmicky entertainment- The System was one of the most informative pieces of television you’ll ever see. It should be compulsory viewing in all secondary schools.

Watch the clip below- Derren Brown tosses a coin so it comes up heads ten times in a row. He uses the same technique to convince a member of the public that something which is totally impossible is actually happening.

Derren Brown Tossing

 

Watch the whole show if you have time- it’s worth it.
The techniques used by Derren Brown are employed (with less style, honesty and intelligence) by Jamie Oliver.

 

The chubby Duncan out of Blue impersonator will base his Ministry of Food show on a number of Jamie Facts. Jamie Facts are like real facts- except they have no basis in reality and do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

 

The Jamie Facts are:

60% of people are incapable of cooking.
The inability to cook is the main reason for the obesity problem in the UK.
Rotherham people are particularly bad examples of the above.
There is nowhere for people to learn to cook if they want to.

 

To set up his show- it is imperative for Jamie Oliver to prove the Jamie Facts. Not only that- he must entertain his audience. The first episode of Ministry of Food is reportedly already in the can.

 

He pulled off the same trick with Jamie’s School Dinners. In that case- he had a far easier sell and a receptive audience. People remember this show as a classic piece of TV- exposing a national scandal.

 

I would suggest you watch the first three minutes of this clip.
Jamie Mugs For the Camera and Makes Working Class Kids Look Bad

 

Not the classic you remember (I’ll give my review of it next time). Just think how easy it would be to present the opposite case with exactly the same kids in exactly the same school.

 

Then think how the people of Rotherham are going to be represented when he sets out to prove his Jamie Facts.

 

No Blackmail

Rotherham’s Kitchen Nightmare

There was a big name chef around our area last week.

He came on a flying visit to shoot an episode of his show: “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.”

Gordon Ramsay was working his brand of magic on The Runaway Girl in Sheffield city centre. The Runaway Girl is a bar/ restaurant that serves as a hang out for Sheffield’s media elite (seriously). I’ve been in there three times for a drink and it’s always been pretty busy. I’ve never eaten there, but the food looked pretty good and the staff were always bang on.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is a show that runs to an exact formula. Ramsay goes to restaurant. Ramsay observes food service for one night. It’s an absolute disaster. Customers complain, staff don’t know what they’re doing. Ramsay identifies the problems and fixes them. The problems are always: the manager is too hands on, the chef is the hero who is not allowed to express himself and the menu is too complicated. The solutions are always: give the chef more space, simplify the menu and use locally sourced ingredients. The relaunch is preceded by an event where Ramsay and the staff don T-shirts, pick up loud hailers and take to the streets.

I don’t think I am spoiling it for anyone by revealing that The Runaway Girl is now renamed Silversmiths. The ‘street’ event took place in the Peace Gardens. What was once a music venue cum café bar is now a full on restaurant specialising in “modern Yorkshire” cuisine.

All fine and dandy. Gordon Ramsey’s show is a piece of entertainment where everyone’s a winner. We know it’s entertainment because it has the name of the star in the title: like Bob’s Full House, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. You don’t have the name of the star in a serious programme. It’s not Paxo’s Newsnight or Question Time with Dimbleby.

Which brings us to Jamie’s Ministry of Food. Why is there no anti-Ramsay blog?

For a start- it’s what brings them here. Gordon Ramsay was invited by the owner of The Runaway Girl. He identified that his business had problems and asked for the programme maker’s help. The people of Rotherham did not invite Jamie Oliver to our town. We were chosen so he could re run the footage of the Rawmarsh lasses feeding their kids. A nice, cheap and nasty intro to every show and a shoo in with the newspapers. They loved those Northern stereotypes before and they’ll love ‘em again.

The Runaway Girl’s problems will be exaggerated beyond recognition to set up the show for the viewers. There have already been a few series of Kitchen Nightmares- the owners know what they are letting themselves in for. They will be told the food is shit and someone waiting fifteen minutes for bread will be repackaged as a disaster of Titanic proportions.

Rotherham’s alleged problems must also be set up for the viewing audience. To convince the viewers that a real problem exists- they will be shown a hideously exaggerated version of life in our town. Rotherham will be portrayed as a place where everyone lives on a diet of kebabs, chips and Embassy Regal. If we are portrayed as normal- Jamie’s audience will find it hard to believe we need the patronising remedies that he is going to dish out.

No matter what kind of restaurant Ramsay has visited, both in this country and the United States, he has come up with the same answers: simplify the menu and use fresh local produce. These are hard and fast rules of the catering biz and it’s hard to think of any café or restaurant that wouldn’t benefit from them. Ramsay simply plays the role of sweary business consultant.

Ministry of Food has no clear problem to address. The press releases say Jamie: “wants to teach people how to cook in order to beat obesity and related illnesses”, but also waffle on about cooking for the sake of cooking. There are no hard and fast rules for tackling obesity. Personally, I would say encouraging exercise was the best route forward. The “Pass it On” campaign seems ill thought out and frivolous. In an age when you can’t move for websites, cookbooks and TV chefs- the message is clear: anyone who really wants to cook for themselves can already.

Kitchen Nightmares always ends with triumph for Ramsay. The place is packed for the re-launch. Beaming punters testify to the success of the new dishes on offer. The owner is delighted- And why not. The owner of Silversmiths (formerly known as The Runaway Girl) will get one hour of free advertising on Channel 4 (plus the re runs on More 4 etc).  What a deal that is to put to any small business:

We will broadcast hours of free publicity that ends with us saying that your business is now absolutely fantastic. Bookings and profits will go through the roof. In exchange, you must let a bloke with a funny chin call you a wanker a a couple of times.

Silversmiths is already booming off the back of the local word of mouth publicity. Once the show airs- the only nightmare will be trying to get a table there. It’s win / win for all involved. As we all know it will turn out OK in the end- it gives us licence to laugh at the hapless fools we are shown in the first half of the show.  

Ministry of Food will end as triumph for Jamie Oliver. It is the only satisfactory conclusion for a star driven entertainment show. Jamie can choose whatever outcome he wants to highlight as there are no tangible measures of success. No balance sheets or order books. One area he is pushing is registrations on the website- something that in no way proves people are eating healthily or “passing it on”. Another is visits to the HQ in All Saints Square. A free activity open to anyone with a nosey nature and no interest in cooking. The favourite is the progress of his specially selected cooking class. The hand picked few who will be used to define the low level of cooking skills in Rotherham. Their heavily edited incompetence will be most people’s abiding memory of the show. Those who stuck it out were rewarded with a party at the Aston Hall last week. No doubt, there were tears of thanks as they were encouraged to recall how useless they were before St Jamie showed them how to boil rice. This will make the viewers feel OK about how much they laughed at them earlier in the early episodes.

So there’s the big difference. Feature on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and you get a huge boost to your business. Feature on Jamie’s Ministry of Food- you get a recipe book and a photo with Jamie in return for being the poster boy of sloth and greed. For the town of Rotherham as whole – the effect will be the polar opposite of the Ramsay show. In the UK psyche, we will have been (unfairly) identified as a national leader in obesity, stupidity and laziness. How is that going to affect inward investment and job creation. Hours of advertising that say: Rotherham is a joke. Now that’s what I call a nightmare.

 

No Blackmail