Episode 2

This week’s dollop kicked off with a few clips to remind the audience that normal life in Rotherham is all about force feeding kebabs to kids and not understanding the concept of boiling.

 

The visit to the last match at Millmoor was a pointless set piece, supposedly intended to attract local men to the project.

 

 

The whole Pass it On idea was shown to be worthless. Even under pressure from the production team- nobody was actually doing it. That’s really going to work in other towns then. You know- ones where you won’t have the celebrity chef and the TV cameras to gee you up.

 

 

No nonsense sidekick Julie Critchlow told him he had to shake his team up and bring in some new faces. See- in the show, it’s never the idea that’s bad: it’s the people of Rotherham. Luckily- there’s always a collaborator on hand to explain this to the camera.

 

 

This pep talk happened in the hairdressers and included a number of quick camera cuts and different angles (including one of those arty but difficult to pull off into the mirror shots).

 

 

How many takes do you think it took before they got that “get rid of the deadwood” scene right?

 

 

So back to Millmoor to seek out new blood. How lucky were they that Mick the Miner happened to turn up? And to randomly pick him to go first.

 

 

Not that lucky really- seeing as he had been headhunted by researchers who visited Maltby colliery (or Maltby Mine as the series called it). He had given them his details and they had invited him along. Despite the fact that he lives 24 miles away from Millmoor (Armthorpe, on the other side of Donny) and is on record as saying he wanted nothing to do with Jamie Oliver- he turned up. Hey presto- he is picked as the guy to go first.

 

 

He was willing to say and do anything to get on telly. In his suspiciously stiff wooden chat with Jamie, he repeated: “that’s the first thing I’ve ever cooked in my life” over and over. He then went on about how there was a stigma about men cooking.

 

 

“I’m a miner, know what I mean”.

 

 

Not really. In a way- this is as bad as last week for confirming stereotypes. Northern men are useless, sexist oafs. Like everyone else in the series- they can only become real men by copying the Jamie example.  Jamie made the point that these were “proper lads” and it was great to see them “transformed”.

 

 

Obviously wishing to prolong his TV career- Mick the miner chipped in with:

 

 

“What I’ve done today is probably the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life”.

 

 

What sad empty lives the nation must think we lead. How we aspire deep down to be as good as the target audience. They have it all and we live in caves. Thank goodness a missionary came to show us posh ham and asparagus.

 

 

Jamie responded to camera:

 

“Show me why miners don’t cook. Real men do cook”.

 

 

Of course miners do cook, but for the series to work and the spin offs to sell- we need to buy into the idea that Jamie can remove the stigma of cooking for men (Even though there is no stigma). 

 

There was a dud story line about a beef farmer who’d never eaten beef or something- then it was back to class.

 

 

The girls were worried about the new comers threatening their shot at TV stardom. After seeing Mick put in some A grade arse kissing about the taste of chillies- they had to up their game. For the camera- Natasha explained how they were letting down the great man. How he was taking the trouble to do all this for them and they were letting him down.

 

 

All failure is down to us. All success is down to Jamie.

 

 

Back in town- there is a little scene which enables everyone to see the brand name on the back of the kitchen fitters T-Shirts. Let’s hope that Sainsburys don’t accidentally get any exposure in the same way when the staff start wearing their logo.

 

 

In walks hapless council leader Roger Stone. Here we see a mark getting played. The Sun quoted a figure of £130,000 when talking about the running of the shop. On camera- Jamie parrots a few clichés and puts the hand on him for the cash and says he wants the council to keep it on when he’s gone.

 

 

Country and Western fan Roger fell for this once before when he signed up for a scheme similar to Bookstart last year. When I say similar- it’s like pretty much exactly the same only the council leader got to meet Dolly Parton and the council tax payers had to fund it. He is non committal, but we know the drill now Roger.

 

 

Back to Natasha. Planting her own food, saying her kid thought kebabs grew in the ground and getting her friends to shake their bums while they stir fry.  She tells Jamie that Rotherham people are stubborn. Boy does she want to keep her TV career alive. She overacts when she gets her surprise promotion- but it’s OK.

 

 

In a perfectly logical step (by the standards of Ministry of Food) no nonsense sidekick Julie Critchlow- who it has been firmly established can cook- joins the group. She will be taught how to throw salad leaves into a bowl by someone who it was firmly established last week can’t cook- even though her boyfriend works in a café and she uses a knife like someone who has loads of kitchen experience.

 

 

Will Natasha pull it off? (Yawn).

Jamie calls her live on the radio- and she tells him it was all good.

 

Remember

 

 

Will they show the next radio show- when he calls to ask Clare how the lessons are going and is told that nobody turned up to the last one?

 

 

“If you’re ever low. If you ever question if Pass it On I a load of old bollocks- if your confidence ever goes. Go see Mick.”

 

 

Mick has changed “after his Epiphany”. He thought it was for women- till he met Jamie.

 

 

This is a remarkable man. Someone who has steadfastly refused to cook but, when offered the chance to be on telly, completes a 40 mile plus round trip to be shown how to put salad leaves in a bowl by someone else who pretends they never cook.

 

 

We are treated to a little teaser for next week, where those useless Rotherham bastards are kicking off about nowt again to thwart our hero’s vision. No nonsense sidekick Julie Critchlow and Jamie have a chat on a driveway. There are cuts to close ups of both, a two shot, an over the shoulder shot and a long shot to finish. How many takes do you think it took them to get the right level of drama?

 

 

This week- the images of Rotherham were less toxic than last week, but the whole thing was more obviously contrived. Everything was so clearly set up and the characters played their parts with such gusto. This makes the cruel, exploitative images of last week even worse. Surely,no-one can seriously believe that what is being shown is reality.

 

 

This means that the poor girls we were invited to hate last week are OK now because Jamie saved them.

 

The image of single mums who Jamie has not met is still kebab muncher.

 

 

Remember that Roger Stone- when it’s time to sign that next cheque.

 

 

Normal life in Rotherham is all about force feeding kebabs to kids and not understanding the concept of boiling- that’s the advert you paid for.

 

Mick the Miner: Picasso and Me

Mick the Miner was the star of today’s piece in The Sun.

The Ministry of Food hype offensive is impressive- a double page spread every day in the nation’s biggest selling newspaper. Unfortunately for the producers- the more information that gets out about this enterprise, the more the whole thing is exposed as a charade.

Casting is everything when you’re putting together a drama.

The pretence the whole show is built upon is that our hero is haunted by the images of Rawmarsh. He decides the key to the nation’s health is to get people cooking at home. He decides to kick off his new chefs’ network in Rotherham. If he can get the town of food sin onside- surely the rest of the country will believe in the project. The whole thing will end with a huge party next to the fence where the burger mums force fed their kids chips. The town that rejected Jamie have come to love him and accept that he is always right and they were worthless no marks till he shone his light upon them.

A key ingredient is getting the right stereotypes on board to crumble in the face of Home Counties finger wagging.

No doubt, number one on the shopping list was a big, obstinate miner. The Jamie target audience loved Billy Elliot. It was the closest to ‘Up North’ most of them had ever been. They would be sure to flip over a journey which took a senior version out of his dreary existence to a new life of metrosexuality. Imagine if Jamie could take a sexist oaf and pass him off in society as almost a Southerner.

The researchers probably thought that they’d be able to find a collier who fitted the bill easily. Rotherham- you won’t be able to move for ‘em. Riding round the cobbled streets on their pit ponies: a trombone in one hand and a snap tin full of pigtail baccie in the other. Then they hit a slight hitch.

The only pit left in the borough of Rotherham is Maltby. Maltby is a town in it’s own right- complete with Jobcentre, non league football team and everything. The pit is at the far end of town- I’d guess about eight or nine miles from Rotherham town. Quite a hike.

Undeterred- the production company went headhunting for a miner. Mick the Miner takes up the story in today’s Sun:

“Two girls from Jamie’s TV company came to the pit earlier this year and when they saw me finishing my shift they asked if I could cook.

“I said, ‘No, it’s for poofs’.

“My wife does all the cooking — I’ve never even made beans on toast’.

They must have nearly wet their pants with excitement. The perfect subject. Sexist, homophobic, larger than life- if Jamie could get this guy on camera and convert him it would be TV gold. Even if he didn’t- we could sort it in the edit. If it all goes wrong- we can hang the dinosaur out to dry and feed him to the liberal columnists.

Another, bigger hitch. The Sun describes our hero as:

“Mick, from Armthorpe near Doncaster.”

I assume this is true.

I’ll admit- I had to look Armthorpe up on the map. It’s so far East it may as well be Warsaw. According to the RAC website- it is 22.65 miles from the centre of Rotherham.

To help our Southern readers: imagine if someone was supposed to be making a campaigning documentary about social problems in Inner London – but one of the main characters is someone who lives in Guildford and works in Croydon.

So much for the idea of getting the local community together to help each other. Mick can get to Hull as easy as Rotherham. The message is clear- the producers found someone who would be an ideal character for Jamie to bounce off. So what if he doesn’t live in the town we’re supposed to be helping.

Another hitch- a real deal breaker: Mick wasn’t interested. No way Jose. He had no intention of getting involved. He told The Sun:

“They were very persistent, though, and eventually I gave them my number — to get rid of them.”

 

Exactly what anyone would do right? When you’re dead set against something- you give the people who are hassling you your contact details, so they know where to reach you whenever they want. To further show his resolve and resistance to cooking- Mick travelled all the way to Rotherham for a Jamie event. The rest is history.

The relationship between Mick the Miner and Jamie Oliver is a glaring example of the flaws underpinning Jamie’s Ministry of Food. Both men are using each other for their own ends. Jamie Oliver needs to produce an entertaining TV show. He needs participants willing to jump through hoops and basically build the Jamie myth. For reasons we have outlined before- the Pass it On idea is fundamentally unattractive to those it is supposedly designed to help.

Off the back of his “success” in Rotherham- Jamie will be able to sell books. More importantly- he will be able to set up the Pass it On campaign among his core fans. They all cook anyway, but this could turn into some posho dinner party database. Social networking’s where it’s at baby. A fully signed up and subscribed foodie nation who can be pimped out to any marketeer with a pound note. Facebook for people who love food. (Chubbyfacebook? Doublechinbook?)

 

Cynical, sinister- but pretty smart eh?

 

Mick the Miner is obviously a very popular bloke at Maltby colliery. The comments and emails I have received about him since I first mentioned him on the blog have talked about him in glowing terms. I’m not going to pretend I know Mick, but the impression I get is- he likes to be the centre of attention. Take this comment from “Maltby Mafia” for example:

“nar then leave ar mick alone he just loves publicity he might be a balloon head but he’s ar balloon head.”
The love of publicity is the only possible reason for someone who claims to hate cooking to get involved with the Ministry. The difference in attendancefigures at the M of F HQ between when the cameras were there and when they weren’t was colossal. Once the cameras are gone for good and the scheme is rolled out- only the foodies will be left. They’re the ones with the profile the advertisers want anyway- so it’s all good. Social enterprise- do leave it out.

To get to that stage- the Rotherham experiment needs to turn the paper the right colour. Through Mick- Jamie has the ideal savage to do a Henry Higgins on. He also got the chance to dress up like a little action man and go down the pit with his new, butch friends- which will excite his sizeable “poof” following no end.

(Article with photo of Jamie and Mick getting down and dirty)

Mick’s goal is unclear. I’m not really buying the road to Damascus conversion. The stuff Mick comes out with is so over the top. I’m thinking he either knows what the producers want and he lays on the Northern schtick with a trowel to keep the lens pointed on him or he is simply taking the piss.

Examples from today’s Sun:

“It was like a miracle had happened — all the flavours just exploded in my mouth. I knew that from that moment I was hooked.”

“It was like Picasso had walked into my life and taught me how to paint.”

 

Whether he’s on the level or angling for Carol Vorderman’s job is immaterial. Mick the Miner has been parachuted into town to portray the unhealthy, feckless, takeaway loving populace of Rotherham- although he looks pretty healthy in his pictures, has sporty kids, has eaten his wife’s home cooked food every night and doesn’t live in Rotherham.

They may as well get actors in. They may as well use puppets.

This is as unreal as reality TV gets.

Mick the Miner: The Face of Rotherham

Remember the 1980s.

It was all Yuppies in Golf GTIs yapping into mobiles the size of bricks. I never actually saw this myself, but TV told me about it so often, I believe it. My abiding memory of the 1980s is the bloke in a City wine bar waving a bottle of Rolling Rock and fingering a wad of notes in his shirt pocket as he leers into the camera. I’ve seen that image so often on list shows, I feel like I was there. Such is the power of TV

From October: Rotherham will be personified by Mick the Miner. If you don’t know the name yet- get used to it. Mick the Miner is going to be one of the faces of my hometown.

In the future- when people mention Rotherham- they will think of Mick the Miner. Potential investors will visualise Mick the Miner when they consider bringing jobs here. William Shakespeare is Stratford-upon-Avon.

Mick the Miner is Rotherham.

You can’t say we didn’t warn you.

Jamie says that 60% of people can’t cook at all. Lie.

Oliver came to town because he needed to back up the lie his money making scheme is based on. He also needed to make sure his core audience wasn’t offended. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

His publicity machine has churned out statements about how he was “haunted” by the images of the Rawmarsh lasses on their lunch run. He joined in the cruel mockery at the time- but then he saw a chance to cash in on his “caring” shtick one more time.

His first step was to set up a class of non-cookers to teach for the cameras. If you thought he would choose normal, everyday people to address a serious issue…I know a Nigerian diplomat who wants your bank details. This is entertainment baby- sleazy to the max.

Ideally- this group would conform to the thicko Northern stereotypes he came to Rotherham to exploit and they would go on a reality TV journey guided by the benevolent St Jamie. This tried and tested formula is what his ABC1 Southern female viewers lap up.

He has started to introduce the stooges who have been hand picked to represent sloth, ignorance and gluttony in service of his greed.

In Jamie’s first Radio Sheffield hour- we met Natasha. She claimed to live on nothing but kebabs and takeaways seven days a week. After four cooking lessons with Jamie- she said her life had been transformed. She sits down at the table to every meal with her two children.

Find that little morality tale unlikely- Jamie’s ready to go nuclear.

Meet Mick the Miner.

“Mick the Miner, 56 years old, was even uncomfortable being next to me. He’d never cooked in his life. I showed him the chicken dish that takes about 12 minutes. When he finished it and tasted it, it was like he’d seen colour telly for the first time in his life. He hasn’t stopped cooking since”.

After his corporate bunfight at Magna, Jamie put Mick on the radio. Mick was asked what his level of experience was before he became one of Jamie’s disciples.

“Not a thing- never cooked a meal… My wife did all the cooking.”

This raises a few questions.

1] Jamie’s Ministry of Food is supposed to be about improving health by encouraging home cooking. If Mick was getting home cooked meals off his wife- why was he seen as someone who needed personal tuition from Jamie?

2] If Mick really wanted to learn to cook- why didn’t he ask his wife to help him out? He has someone at home who has promised to love and honour him for life, but he prefers to seek the help of a stranger who he: “was even uncomfortable being next to…”. Is it possible he is just a sad sac who was desperate to be on telly?

3] If, after trying Jamie’s Chicken Chow Mein: “it was like he’d seen colour telly for the first time in his life”- What the Hell has his wife been feeding him all this time? Is it possible that he wanted to say what his new master wanted to hear? Does Mick the Miner just do whatever Jamie wants him to because he wants to be on the colour telly himself? Do you think maybe Jamie and his team egg Mick on to play the stereotype they need?

I ask this because something troubles me about Mick the Miner. He’s too good/bad to be true.

For a start, he’s a miner. That’s, probably the kind of worker an ABC1 woman would expect to find in Rotherham. Not anymore gals. You’ve been watching too many 1980s list shows. They’re pretty rare on the ground these days. But don’t you think sexist old miner would be high on any shopping list of South Yorkshire stereotypes. I look forward to watching fish pies being baked by Mick, brassy blonde barmaid and boy grieving kestrel murdered by sadistic brother

During the interview on Radio Sheffield; Jamie asked his little buddy to tell the listeners the thing he always used to say. Mick obliged:

“Men mine and women cook”.

See, I was born and bred in Rotherham when the pits were a major employer. I was brought up in a mining family and, without an ounce of irony, I can say that some of my best friends were miners. I never once heard anyone use the verb “to mine” to describe what they did for a living.

“I mine at Maltby”. “I’ve been mining for years”. “The paddy broke down and we didn’t start mining till 10 o’clock”.

It just sounds wrong to my ear. It’s like a steelworker saying: “Men steelwork”.

Maybe Mick said something along those lines and it was re-jigged for him by one of the production team. Some Londoner who doesn’t understand the local culture. Maybe he repeated it and Jamie liked it- so it became his catchphrase. His passport to telly time. The more the lovely celeb tickled him- the more he learned to roll over and show him his bits. Everyone playing their fake role in a huge charade.

You may think I’m being a bit harsh – and you’re right. It will be harsh on my town when we are portrayed as a bunch of imbeciles to highlight a problem that doesn’t exist. Drawing on their personal experience- viewers will reject the idea that 60% of people are unable to boil rice. From the episodes of Jamie’s Ministry of Food they see- it will be imprinted in their minds that Rotherham is populated by incompetent tossers who deserve to live in their post industrial squalor.

The media spotlight doesn’t shine on our town very often. Anyone who collaborates in this shoddy enterprise is selling us out- and for what?

My message to collaborators is: if you think this is harsh, wait till Jamie’s finished with you. When the tender moments are on the cutting room floor and all that is left is the image of the bungler being groomed to semi adulthood by the wise mentor.

How do you think people are going to treat you?

“You’ve not dropped it again Mick. Do as I say and you will escape your pathetic life. Look at the colour telly Mick. Isn’t is beautiful”

What you are doing now will define you for the rest of your life.

Do you trust Jamie and his team not to stitch you up?

Really?

Stop staring at the light and think for a second.

Come back.

We’re here for you and we’ll be here when the circus moves out.
No Blackmail