A guest blog by Monsieur Josh Burt from Interestment…

Were medieval royals granted a few weeks living in the 21st century, they would be astounded by what they see. Outraged even.

Look, the jesters have become film stars! Hark, the lowly kitchen workers are all over television making big money! Next thing you know, the bottom wipers will be running the country. Oh, hang on…

Either way, the medievals can shut the hell up, because we absolutely adore the celebrity cooks. So much so that we thought it completely necessary to come up with a top five. It reads exactly like this…

1. Marco Pierre White

By far the most potent and admirable of all celebrity chefs, he is like a strange, pot bellied soothsayer with massive hair. On Hell’s Kitchen he would explain endlessly to a mob of mouth-breathing soap actresses that Mother Nature is the real food genius, not him – a tactic which somehow made him seem even more impressive. And in real life, he has taught celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal how to correctly boil pig’s heads. He also has the look of a man who could silently strangle you without once breaking eye contact.

2. Anthony Bourdain

Anyone who saw his excellent show A Cook’s Tour already knows everything you need to know about Bourdain. He struts around war zones in a Ramones t-shirt looking for exciting dinners, nonchalantly chewing beating cobra’s hearts, as well as a few very penis looking objects. He is constantly smoking strong cigarettes, and is known to drink very heavily. The perfect cook.

3. Keith Floyd

Floyd doesn’t make the list for the quality of his food – if anything, he tended to only ever make a stew. He was what the bald one in Masterchef with the gargantuan stomach would call a “one pot cook”, because everything was just sloshed together in a massive pan while Floyd got leathered. He has since been replaced with the “slice it up! Chump it off! Toss it around!” generation. Twats.

4. Heston Blumenthal

There is something about Blumenthal that makes him a little bit hard to like. It could be the way that whenever he’s cooked something nice, he stares intently at the people eating it, his grin getting ever more self-satisfied with each slow motion chew. BUT, on the plus side, he’s really genuinely brilliant to watch. The main difference between him and the other four being that they could all be guests at a fantastic dinner party, while he’d only be invited along as a cook.

5. Ainsley Harriott

Like Floyd, Harriott doesn’t look like he’d actually make anything you’d want to put in your mouth, but his presenting skills are second to none. Never less than euphoric, the real joy comes from knowing that even he doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to say next when he’s talking to someone. Total gibberish.

This has been a guest blog by Josh Burt by that legendary cad Josh Burt from Interestment.co.uk. VISIT!

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This three-part miniseries charts chemistry set chef Heston Blumenthal’s appointment to revive moribund restaurant chain Little Chef with his unique inimitable brand of weird food.

Essentially it is a cross between Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and one of Jamie Oliver’s ‘only I can save Britain’ missions.

Blumenthal is, as the narrator points out, probably the most unlikely celebrity chef anyone would have thought of to fix Little Chef. He does have a very big BMW however, and the viewer is reminded of this in pretty much every other shot.

The big cheese at Little Chef is Chief Executive Ian Pegler; a man who seems mildly cretinous thanks to his insistent level of false perkiness. Added to this is his attempt to fake the possession of some charisma, which, unfortunately, begins to grate quite quickly (big cheese/grate… no?).

Then along comes Michael, the manager of the restaurant picked to pilot Heston’s new dishes. This is a man who has been with Little Chef for 25 years. Understandably this appears to have left some visible damage in both his physical appearance and mental condition. Joining the company as a dish washer, Michael is incredibly precious about Little Chef, and quite temperamental in his conversations with the Fat Duck head chefs.

The problem, which runs throughout the first episode, and no doubt through the rest of the series is that the Chief Exec wants Blumenthal to create a dramatic new menu which supplies a ‘taste explosion’. The problem with this is that he also doesn’t want to alienate the 11 million strong customer base who enjoy tasteless tripe. Something about having cake and eating it springs to mind.

That figure of 11 million does seem far-fetched – we don’t know anyone who eats at the chain, and struggle to think of the sort of demographic which does. We can only imagine it is elderly drivers, people who used to shop at Safeway and insist they still do, generally simple people, and those with excessive hair growth on the back of their hands.

Nevertheless, some of the customers who were asked about the pilot menu did come across as vaguely articulate and made fair points about a motorway food outlet not being the right environment for outlandish food, or ‘poncy’ food as one eater put it. Though to them, poncy is probably eating food with clean cutlery.

A trait of Pegler which comes through very strongly is his inconsistency and hypocrisy, something Blumenthal is at pains to allude to throughout. In Heston’s defence, Pegler is VERY irritating, and manages to use the term ‘blue sky thinking’ no less than three times. He also hangs up on the experimental chef when pressed for details on his profit margins. Low grade food perchance?

It’s going to be an entertaining series if this was anything to go by. And, man, that Olympic breakfast looked good.

[story by Keith Emmerson]

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Hey you! Ever dreamt of a day when a tedious road journey could be broken up with a delicious steaming plate of Ballotine of Anjou Pigeon?

Of course you have, we all have. And soon maybe we will. Channel 4 has poached crazy food scientist Heston Blumenthal away from BBC2 and given him his own show. Heston's first task? Turning around the fortunes of Little Chef.

It goes without saying that Heston Blumenthal has his work cut out, though – how is the revolutionary, three Michelin starred proprietor of one of the world's best restaurants going to be able to improve on an Olympic Breakfast, for christ's sake? It's an impossible task!

Although generally there's nothing worse than a TV chef, we have to confess a soft spot for Heston Blumenthal. He's brilliant – unlike Gordon he doesn't control his kitchen with fear, unlike Jamie he actually cooks stuff instead of just bellowing about poor little chickens all the time, unlike Worrell he doesn't have a shit little beard, unlike Delia he doesn't just cook some frozen potato wedges and pass them off as his own and unlike Nigella he doesn't prance about in tinfoil knickers. As far as we know. 

But that's not why Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant. No, Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant because everything he does is so very breathtakingly impractical. On his BBC2 show In Search Of Perfection, Heston Blumenthal proved that he couldn't even make beans on toast without flying round the world six times, cooking a billion different beans in imperceptibly different ways, building a scale model of the CERN atom collider in his back garden out of shoes and using an oven heated by a swishing griffin's tail first.

But there'll be no more of that self-indulgent waffle, because now Heston Blumenthal has decided to use his powers for good. Well, not good exactly, but he's going to teach ailing roadside cafe chain Little Chef to cook all funny and shit. The Telegraph reports:

Now Heston Blumenthal is to bring his peculiar brand of kitchen chemistry to the Little Chef chain for a Channel 4 series this summer. The experiment will see Blumenthal take over one of the motorway cafes and re-invigorate its menu, interior and service standards. His ideas will then be implemented in all 193 outlets. Cathy Stevenson, the marketing director at Little Chef, said: "Heston will be helping us with our menu, the restaurant interiors and our training and service standards. It will be a total re-brand."

Like us, this news probably stirs up all kinds of conflicting emotions. Little Chef is a British institution, as old as motorways themselves, and we've all got fond memories of golden childhood holiday journeys broken up by stops at Little Chef for an Early Starter or some Jubilee Pancakes. The last thing we need is for some crackpot ponce to waft in and change everything around until the menu comprises nothing but lavender-scented asparagus tips and thimbles of poached quail gazpacho reduction served by waitresses dressed like leopardskin astronauts.

Then again, at the same time, we haven't been to a Little Chef for about a decade and that's because last time we went the food tasted like balls and the waitress had a face like a slapped arse. So maybe Heston Blumenthal really can turn the fortunes of Little Chef around.

Or maybe he'll bugger everything up and destroy the company forever. We don't really care either way. Like we said, we haven't been to one for a decade.

Read more:

Heston Blumenthal to transform Little Chef - Telegraph