On another planet

DURING the 147 years I've been doing this telly reviewing lark, I've often drawn comfort from the scientific theory that somewhere, in a parallel universe, there must be a planet very similar to our own, but with strange and subtle differences. On that planet (let's call it Tharg), British tennis players routinely triumph at Wimbledon and the National Lottery raises money for bad causes (such as saving the polio germ from extinction), while their Cancer Scratchcards give the chosen winners a brief but carcinogenic burst of exposure to strontium-90. As for television, their schedules too are dominated by food shows, yet they're oddly dissimilar to ours, because on Tharg, cookery is treated as a serious art, not a frivolous sport, food is prepared with respect, not regarded as a pretext for the playing of crass games, and the chefs who host the programmes don't regard themselves as being the main dish of the day.

Sadly, our satellite TV providers cannot yet relay Thargian cookery programmes to Earthly subscribers, which is why I spent yesterday afternoon watching Taste CFN (formerly known as the Carlton Food Network). If you've ever wondered what's happened to all those once-familiar faces who have lately disappeared from our screens (Mark Curry, Nanette Newman, Helen Lederer, Anthea Turner), you'll find many of them here, hosting hour upon saccharine-sweet hour of uninspired and uninspiring gastroporn, among which Whose Recipe Is It Anyway? must surely rank as one of the most vapid.

"Today's chef hasn't got a clue " began Toyah Willcox, with what I initially mistook for almost Thargian honesty, but she spoiled the effect by adding, " whose recipe he'll be piecing together", and the poverty of ambition of "the show that's played for laughs" gradually became clear. In a desperate cross between Through the Keyhole and Ready Steady Cook, some poor sod was going to cook a dish against the clock using someone else's ingredients, while simultaneously trying to guess their identity, in a format that was undoubtedly half- baked, but which fully deserved to be roasted.

While Paul Gayler (perhaps the least-celebrated "celebrity chef" in the history of the genre) began turning haddock and potatoes into fish pie, Ms Willcox quizzed him about who he thought might have selected such a dish.

"Our guest needs all the nutrients," she told him helpfully, but sensing that he might need even more detailed clues in order to unmask the identity, she then ran to the gallery and revealed to you- the-viewer that the recipe donor was former javelin thrower and gadoid aficionado Fatima Whitbread. "When I was an athlete, I needed 8,000 calories a day," the former world champion confided in a spirited attempt to make a link between the sporting and gastronomic sides of her life, but she had the startled-bunny look of a woman who didn't have the faintest idea what she was doing there, or what was expected of her, and neither did I. As our former punk presenter lisped long ago during a former incarnation, "it'th a mythtery."

From then on it was downhill all the way (not unlike Ms Willcox's career), as the host ran back and forth between her two guests, not so much dropping blatant hints to the chef as bludgeoning him about the head with them. "The guest lives near you just a javelin's throw away," she told him, then looked at the dish and said: "Some people might turn that into muscle," but these clues merely confirmed Gayner in his belief that it was a politician: "Not Maggie Thatcher could we be talking about Edwina Curry?" "Thath very, very good geth," lied Toyah, who then asked: "Have you ever drunk beer? like Whitbread?"

whereupon Paul cried out: "Is it Tessa Sanderson?" thereby disproving in one the theory that fish is good for the brain. But it's unfair to blame the D-list celebrity chef, because the real problem lay with whoever had booked the D-list celebrity guest, and then expected the former to guess the latter, despite his having never heard of her before.

IN the end, they didn't make fish pie, they made televi-sual zabaglione, which looked substantial but was mostly air. And I'm not surprised, because the dilution of quality that's been caused in recent years by hundreds of stations competing for finite resources of revenue and talent was utterly predictable before it began, and, indeed, I predicted it. A decade ago, when satellite broadcasting was in its infancy, I wrote this (yes, sorry, I've reached the age when I'm pompous enough to quote myself): "Greater choice does not always ensure greater value. Imagine 20 new theatres opening in your local town, when the existing theatre is already struggling to survive. Would you expect overall production standards to be raised, or lowered?"

But no one listened, and a once-great industry has now entered period of catastrophic fragmentation and decline. I wonder if Tharg TV is available on cable?

Copyright 2001
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