Delia Smith needs to work hard to keep up these days – she doesn't have Gordon's foul mouth, Nigella's boobs or Anthony Worrall Thompson's horrible straggly beard thing.
But what Delia does have is a frozen packet of mashed potato discs. And people literally want to punch her in her stupid face for it.
Delia Smith's new BBC 2 cookery show How To Cheat At Cooking has come in for a bit of a kicking because she's started to use tinned mince and pre-grated cheese in her recipes. And now foodies are so outraged that anyone would think Delia Smith had spent half an hour on Monday shitting into a baby's mouth.
There's nothing that enrages us quite like cookery shows. It's the whole fake middle-class lifestyle food-as-porn posturing that goes along with it, whether it's Jamie Oliver getting stroppy because we buy chicken that hasn't come from an animal which spent its final days sipping brandy and being tended to by a squadron of Swedish masseurs or that slaphead Masterchef wanker who keeps bellowing about his dinner like it's the just-discovered ruins of Ciudad sodding Perdida.
And it's thanks to this – thanks to the way Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall loves food so much that he never finds the time to wash his face or cut his hair – that the world's filling up with ghastly 4X4-driving, Fresh And Wild-shopping Sophias who'd fall over dead if their little Joshua ever ate something that wasn't organically grown or hand-primped by indigenous Himalayan tribespeople. But at least Delia Smith's here to save the day.
After a few years in the television wilderness – perhaps because her fingers were starting to resemble uncooked sausages so much that she kept stabbing herself with a fork – Delia Smith returned to TV this week with her new show How To Cheat At Cooking. Or, as it's otherwise called, How To Cook Frozen Potato Wedges, Put Them On A Plate With A Couple Of Eggs And Some Salad Creme And Say It's A Traditional Dish From Peru.
Because, as you might have heard, Delia Smith's new show mainly just involves Delia opening a couple of packets of pre-packed food, mixing everything together with a spoon and then eating it. And people have reacted as if Delia was asking them to chew on circumcised otter foreskins, as The Telegraph reports:
"Has Delia Gone Mad?" was the title of one particularly active thread on the BBC messageboard. Even members of her own website, Delia Online, were taken aback. "I sat opened-mouthed as I watched the frozen mash being produced. I squirmed at the mention of the tinned mince, cried at the pre-chopped carrots and swede," said one fan. However, the doyenne of cooks was unrepentant… Kate Adam, her spokesman at the BBC, said: "Delia knew there would be a strong reaction. But this show is not designed for people who already know how to cook."
Sad to admit, but we watched Delia's How To Cheat At Cooking, and it was a failure (sad to admit that we watched it, by the way, not sad because it was a failure).
The whole point of the show is that Delia Smith loves the convenience of frozen mashed potato so much that she's become a freshly-minted religious convert to them. But that didn't come across because the downbeat, apologetic way that Delia presented the show made us think that someone was forcing her to do it as some sort of sick Saw-style torture game.
But mainly Delia's How To Cheat At Cooking failed because – get this – people who don't know how to cook probably aren't going to watch a Delia Smith cookery programme. Not when Pop Stars Go Bad is on ITV2.
Still, let's hope that Delia Smith's How To Cheat At Cooking is a success, because then we get to see the half-arsed copycat shows. In particular we're looking forward to Nigella Lawson's How To Eat Sardines Out Of A Can With Your Fingers Like A Filthy Redneck.
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Susie says
Good Article, Except Nigella Lawson has already done the whole convenience food cooking thing (Nigella Express), with results far more appetising than the fish slop Delia served up.
Middleman says
I cannot agree with Delia’s approach. It seems to me that it has nothing to do with cooking at all.
http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/cooking-up-a-storm/
Shannon says
hi guys