There are four certainties in life – birth, death, taxes, and reality television shows. The latest, and best publicised, is ITV’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.

What happens – if you don’t already know – is that two chefs train a bunch of morons to cook restaurant-standard food for people who were famous when your parents were young.

What’s the catch? The two team leaders, Gary Rhodes and Jean-Christophe Novelli, seem as if they’re contractually obliged to shriek and wail like crazy-eyed biblical prophets at the slightest opportunity.

A few years ago there was a daytime TV show called ‘Can’t Cook,
Won’t Cook’, where two lazy or incompetent viewers would be guided
through the process of cooking a meal by Ainslie ‘I make women
uncomfortable by standing too close to them’ Harriett. And sometimes
he’d shout "What are you like?" and it’d all be very funny.

Now, Hell’s Kitchen is basically Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook, but with
all the amiable parts taken out and replaced with the sort of violence
and ill-temper you’d find in Portsmouth town centre at 1am on a
Saturday morning.

Last night’s episode was a perfect example. One of Jean-Christophe’s team
members was a student called Henry. He was a typical student, he spoke
out of one side of his mouth like a stroke victim, and was chronically
self-assured without having anything to be self-assured about. But he
made a fatal mistake.

He put beef sauce on a vegetarian dish. And that, if you’re a chef,
is like someone pooing in the hood of your anorak when you’re not
looking. "Gerrd owwd from ere", Novelli slurred to Henry. "Gerrd owwd
ov may furrrken kisshen". ("Get out from here, get out of my fucking
kitchen" if you don’t speak French)

Then, spectacularly, he punched a plate across a kitchen, and threw
some forks at Henry’s back. And Henry started crying like a big girl
and Jean-Christophe’s team lost.

The other team is captained by Gary Rhodes. Poor Gary was born
lacking in the attitude department, and so he puts on this terribly
over the top performance, mainly with his eyebrows. It’s like he’s only
watched spaghetti westerns to get ready for his part.

Gary, when he was on This Is Your Life a few years ago, was caught
by Michael Aspel at a photoshoot. Where he was throwing a pineapple
around and pulling cheeky faces. And now we’re meant to be taking him
seriously as a badass kitchen cowboy?

A brief aside. A long time ago, the day after Gary Rhode’s first
ever TV show, hecklerspray saw him and asked him for an autograph. He
had a stack of photos of himself in his pocket. The day after his
first-ever TV show. In a field.

One of the reasons that the chefs are acting so over-dramatically is
that the guests in the restaurant can see into both kitchens at once,
so they have to puff themselves up to look good for Myleene Klass or
Timmy Mallett or whichever non-celebrity is waiting for their food.

The show is called Hell’s Kitchen, but really, sitting in a
converted warehouse listening to two grown men screaming like children,
surrounded by people like Jon Culshaw and Sian Lloyd craning their
necks to try and get some camera time, with Angus Deayton walking
around simpering in the smuggest way imaginable would be worse than hell.

Despite this, the show is terrific fun, in a ‘this is entertainment?’ sense. Catch it at 9pm tonight on ITV.

[story by Stuart Heritage]