Punchdrunk or Lovesick?

Folded

• Adam Farmer drew a lovely picture of Chris Brown for us. You should really see it. Stop thinking about his penis.
• Phoenix Square – Everywhere needs a zombie contingency plan.
• Soviet Anti-Drinking Posters – Temperance is not something that we should be laughing at people.
• World War II - It wasn’t folded in any way. In fact, it was very, very creased but these photographs from the years preceding the war are still interesting.

Creased

• Shit London – Being the bitter lot that we are, most of us here in the hecklerspray bedsit think That London’s pretty shit as a rule but here is the “proof”.
• Jamie Oliver – Shut up, we’re all bored. And wear a tie, you’re on the BBC for fuck’s sake.
• Q – Now he’s young and hip. Like the James Bond films. Can’t we just have a zombie Desmond Llewelyn? It’s the only way we’re going to be happy.
• The Manor Reborn – Seriously? What the hell is this?

At time of writing, hecklerspray is unable to confirm or deny that popstrel Lily Allen successfully made herself something to eat last night, but indications are not hopeful according to her twitter feed.

The ‘voice of summer 2006’ has last night thrown the public into turmoil.

Not by “so closely resembling her Dad that you can’t decide whether or not you could smash her without thinking of ‘him’ and laughing about that Tourettes doc he did which would, like, probably put her off and that”, but with an astonishing dining problem.

Fears began when she desperately tweeted:

“It would take me 30mins just to get all these ingredients out of the fridge”

Referring to her forlorn attempts to feed herself.

The tweet also contained the ominous hashtag #jamieoliverlies. hecklerspray does not endorse the opinion that Jamie Oliver is a liar. Or a self-involved neglectful husband, average cook, publicity hound and tubby lisping imbecile. We endorse none of these.

Eschewing the ‘Bullshit Frittata’ recipe she probably found in the fat-tongued idiot-book of recipes, she begged of the social-networking ‘site’ or whatever it’s called:

“What temperature should one bake a potato at ? And for how long ?”

To date no-one is in a position to confirm that any answers were received along the lines of “really hot. And for ages”, but indications are that her ongoing commitment to a baked potato are strong.

Allen’s final anguished tweet regarding her dinner was:

“Is it important to wrap it in foil?”

As of now, sources are unsure about the success or otherwise of the ‘Lily Allen Baked Potato’ pairing. Rumours of a secret encounter with a Birdseye Potato Waffle are being denied, with a source stating that any third-parties are not involved, despite “all the stuff with the foil. If that’s what it takes, Lily’s happy to do it.”

We made the last bit up.

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I was checking out Jamie Oliver’s Twitter page today and was staggered to find a recipe on there. I’d forgotten he was a chef.

Yes, before Jamie turned into Food Jesus, he was actually a bog standard telly cook: a tousle-headed, lisping Delia. His ‘crusade’ TV shows are a more recent phenomenon, but at least he’s tended to stick to a cookery theme.

Until now.

According to some detective work by The Guardian, Food Jesus is planning to found a school ‘with a difference’ and is looking for 16 to 19-year-old students from the Greater London area who left school feeling unfulfilled.

His spokesman Peter Berry has said it’s a ‘fair guess’ that the focus of the series will be on teaching the kids general life skills rather than focusing on cookery.

Er, what?

Sorry, but how is Jamie Oliver – some bloke who can whip up a decent spag bol and has somehow managed to build an estimated £25 million fortune around this – qualified to teach anything other than cookery?

His parents ran a pub, he left school at 16 and after that he was quickly noticed by the BBC as a young sous chef at the River Cafe. They gave him his initial Naked Chef series (you know, the one where he actually cooked things instead of lobbying politicians) and he’s now married to a model, lives in a mansion and has kids called Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo and Petal Blossom.

In his 2008 Ministry of Food series, at the heart of which was the idea that anyone can learn to cook in 24 hours, Jamie went Oop North and bothered the citizens of Rotherham (yes, he’s a Rotherham botherer), hectoring them into giving up their diet of deep fried fat, sugar coated lardy-pops and butter pies.

In one memorable scene, he asks an unemployed mother of two (Natasha) why she hasn’t passed on the recipe he taught her to her friends.

She hasn’t got enough money for the ingredients, she replies tearfully.

Yes, quite staggeringly the first recipe he decided to teach his Northern protégés was a fish pie made with fresh salmon, prawns and smoked haddock. This is a woman who can’t afford to put her heating on half the time. Fresh salmon? I grew up on a council estate in Bolton. I didn’t even know what salmon was until I was 20. I thought it was a sort of vegetable.

He probably means well, but in the words of fellow mockney Lord Sugar: “You ‘aven’t got a bladdy clue, mate. Not a bladdy clue”.

In the clip, Jamie stands around looking awkward while Natasha cries, fanning himself with a wad of fifties and using them to dab his own tear-streaked cheeks before crumpling them up and tossing them in the bin.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you can clearly see he can’t get his head around the strange alternate reality he’s strayed into in which someone can’t afford to buy luxury fish products.

In conclusion, it’ll be very interesting to see what kind of odd world view these 16-19 year olds emerge from St Jamie’s Academy with:

“So, Darren, what’s your career plan?”

“Er, hang around outside BBC Television Centre juggling carrots and lisping winsomely until an exec notices me and gives me my own telly show”

“Sounds good to me.”

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In the left corner we have a man who promotes food, speaks a little bit funny, has the strong support of a close-knit family behind him and looks a bit of an idiot sometimes.

Jamie Oliver? Close – we are of course referring to every child’s favourite creepy clown, Ronald McDonald.

Poor Ronald McDonald has had to face a lot of criticism over the last few years. While no-one can deny that a child is left happier after eating one of his meals, it’s been alleged that it might be down to the gallons of junk flowing through their veins. So step in Jamie Oliver to declare war against foods that are supposedly bad for us. He obviously hasn’t heard our motto as we believe the greasier something is, the tastier it gets. But in a strange turn of events, Jamie is now praising the practices of Ronald and his chums.

Now that the news has broken that Jamie Oliver has found it acceptable to drink litres of BBQ sauce and live off Big Macs, we have to wonder what his intentions are. No pictures have emerged of make-up across his cockney mug after kissing ass to the best-known clown in the business. Though we can imagine an exclusive in a grotty Sunday tabloid fairly soon.

In a comment that will surely cause our American friends to punch their ripples of fat in anger, Jamie Oliver took a swipe at McDonalds in America. Which we assume is just like the UK McDonalds, but only with stupidly bigger portions. He said:

“McDonald’s in the UK is very different to the US model – the quality of beef, they only sell free-range eggs, they only sell organic milk, their ethics and recycling is being improved and improved.”

So what would Jamie Oliver be doing with Ronald McDonald? It can’t be a sordid love affair, as now the entire world knows about them. Nor is he ditching Sainsbury’s to promote a new line of free-range organic bacon sandwiches that were smoked in a bike shed. Then it dawned on us, McDonalds are the dons when it comes to giving away toys that aren’t amazingly crap and cost about two quid.

This got us thinking – if McDonalds were to launch a range of Happy Meal toys featuring Jamie Oliver and other chefs, what would they be like? Save up your pennies children in order to collect the full set. Or ask the disgruntled burger-flipper if he can slip you them for free:

Jamie Oliver – The miniature Jamie doll comes complete with a cardboard cut-out staircase where you can spend hours moving him from the top to the bottom. Once the thrill of that wears off, you can always hang him from the banister.

Gordon Ramsay – Milk lover Gordon doesn’t do anything but comes with a drawstring that features five phrases, including “You stupid fuck you’ve ruined the McNuggets” and “I’d rather drink my own piss then your shit coffee”.

Heston Blumenthal – Eggheaded food mentalist Heston comes with the most amount of fun accessories. Not only can you mix and match small amounts of chemicals to make weird explosions, but a free welding kit means you can attach a lobster to a tool box and see how it tastes when combined with water from the River Thames.

The Hairy Bikers – Can’t grow a beard? Don’t worry; genuine shavings of their sweaty facial hair can be yours. However, it’s advised you don’t put any in your mouth. One of the cheeky scamps shaved off his pubes when he was pissed and added it into the supply chain.

Obviously we can’t confirm if the greasy faced kids working at McDonalds still spit in your food and jizz in the milkshake – but somewhere deep underground in a volcanic layer, we hope Ronald McDonald didn’t hear what Jamie Oliver said. Things will only get nasty.

After all, the Hamburgler will get called to bugger things up. And you don’t want to mess with that crazy fool.

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10 - Let’s end the week the way all weeks should be ended – with a horrific gallery of botched plastic surgery – Popcrunch

9 - You know what’d make Nicolas Cage‘s Wicker Man remake better? Beethoven – Collegehumor

8 – Rule number one about buying condoms: don’t buy them online. Rule number 2: don’t forget to pick up a copy of Halo 2 while you’re at it – Image

7 - Another day, another reason to wish we were Japanese - I Am Bored

6 – Jamie Oliver‘s had a baby. So, you know, woo - Popsugar

5 – Pizza delivery boys are mainly idiots. Here’s a list of why – RD

4 - Great! Apparently you can now pay prostitutes with fast food – Gunaxin

3 - A wonderful list of awful movie soundtrack videos - Afrojacks

2 – Well look here – fetish art by the man who created Superman – Drawn

1 – Relax, parents. You’re only comparatively awful…

Jamie Oliver is a passionate man. He wouldn’t say that himself, mind you – he prefers the term ‘passthszszthionurnk’ – but he is.

And right now, the subject that Jamie Oliver has decided to get most passionate of all about is British drinking culture. Jamie Oliver has told a French magazine that he’s dismayed at how British people would rather get hopelessly drunk than enjoy a delicious platter of painstakingly-prepared food.

No shit Sherlock. Have you ever tried throwing a chair through a pub window after eating a big roast dinner? You’d be lucky not to get a stitch. Jamie Oliver, you really are an enormous goon.

Everyone knows that getting drunk is the best thing in the whole wide world. The camaraderie, the relaxed inhibitions, the stumbling, the chlamydia, the gigantic skull-cracking headache the next morning that makes you want to kill yourself – yes, being shithammered is possibly the best thing in the universe.

But readers, it’s something that Jamie Oliver wants to ban. The great big sod.

You see, in recent years Jamie Oliver has become a sort of big-tongued crusader who’s at his happiest when he’s out on the street tirelessly drumming up support for one campaign or another. In recent years, Jamie Oliver has attached his firebrand mindset to the following:

* Making children eat delicious school dinners

* Banning battery-reared chickens

* Training poor people to be chefs

* Sort of making people in England cook a bit like the Italians do or something

* The wonderful – and barnstormingly inexpensive – variety of food that’s available to buy at Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s: try something new today

* The angelic sounds of Toploader

* Pronouncing his wife’s name in a way that makes him sound like a farting hippo.

And now it’s onto binge drinking. Even though binge-drinking is as traditional a British pursuit as foxhunting, smoking indoors and tutting at foreigners in the street, Jamie Oliver has strolled over to France to complain that British people would rather get bladdered on alcopops than enjoy a terrine of Fois Gras. Jamie told Paris Match magazine:

“People have huge TV sets – a lot bigger than mine – state-of-the-art mobile phones, cars and they get drunk in pubs at the weekend… their poverty shows in the way they feed themselves. I found the cooking of the inhabitants of the slums in Soweto a lot more diverse than ours… I think a lot of English people’s food lacks heart. It’s bland.”

Actually, we have to agree with Jamie Oliver here – the people of Soweto have every reason to be proud. True, they have to deal with the spread of AIDS, rampant crime and violence, a higher infant mortality rate and much lower life expectancy, but never let it be said that they can’t make a lovely sandwich.

However, we absolutely can’t let Jamie Oliver proceed with this awful campaign of his. If he had his way and Britain gave up its dependency on alcohol then there’d be no more Booze Britain-style TV shows. Imagine a world where you can’t spend 30 minutes watching grainy CCTV footage of screaming chavs bottling each other on a minor digital channel. Is that really a world you want to live in?

We're a bunch of inventors here at hecklerspray, you know.

It's just a goshdarn crying shame that the UK Patent Office has yet to realise our genius. Okay, okay… so we never actually tested that time machine made of potatoes. And, sure, that teleportation system that runs entirely on warthog urine is only hypothetical. But – seriously – give us a break, guys. Do you think medicines are tested out before they're released? Maybe on, like, animals or something? Yeah, right – give us a call when the spaceship lands, you nutters.

This whole invention malarkey is good for one thing, though – it's gone and given us another reason to hate omnipresent TV chef Jamie Oliver.

Jamie is also an inventor, you see. He's come up with something he calls the 'Flavour Shaker', an odd little ceramic pepperpot-type-thing that works as follows (instructions courtesy of the product website):

'Simply pop your ingredients inside, add the magic ball and give it a good shake. The ceramic ball does all the work crushing, grinding and bruising the contents, releasing amazing aromas and zingy flavours. You can also add liquids like oil and cream to create delicious dressings and marinades. The Flavour Shaker is sized to give you just the right amount of marinade or dressing (you don't need a lot) so that you can pour the contents straight over your food.'

Jamie is understandably quite proud of his new innovation. So much so, in fact, that he's found himself in a spot of bother with TV regulator Ofcom. It's not happy with the amount of advertising Jamie is doing – and bizarrely enough, it's not referring to the Sainsbury's campaign, a set of commercials so teeth-grindingly irritating that – whenever they turn up on the hecklerspray office TV set – the nurses come round and put us on that pesky 'suicide watch'.

Ofcom is actually referring to Jamie's recent TV series Jamie At Home, during which 'undue prominence' was given to Jamie's Flavy-Shaky-Whatever. We assume that 'undue prominence' actually means 'Mr. Oliver was gurning repeatedly to camera every five seconds and mouthing the words 'Flavour Shaker', before going back to his usual routine of explaining the fine art of cooking in the affected manner of a cockney greyhound wrangler.' But we're not quite sure.

Jamie isn't the only one to get in trouble, however. The allegations were included in the latest Ofcom report, which also features complaints about 'a dog fighting scene on Turner Classic Movies.'

Now, there's a Cary Grant moment we must have missed.

Read More:

Ofcom: Jamie Oliver rapped for plugging Flavour Shaker - Mediabreak

It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong. Or a normal-sized man inexplicably born with a floppy tongue the size of a cow's, at least.

By which we mean Jamie Oliver. As you all probably know, Jamie Oliver's latest campaign has been to make a sort of middle-class poultry snuff film called Jamie's Fowl Dinners all about the horrific mistreatment of battery chickens, and part of that campaign has involved Jamie lashing out at Sainsbury's.

And then, um, realising that Sainsbury's pays him £1.2 million a year to wank about flogging mince pies, causing him to backtrack spectacularly in case he upset his bosses.

Even though you've all probably been watching Big Brother Celebrity Hijack on E4 instead (what's that? You haven't?) you'll probably be aware that Channel 4 is in the middle of a Food Season. Well, it's not so much a Food Season as a Put You Off Eating Anything Ever Again Season.

Channel 4's Food Season is three-pronged. First there's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall showing how inhumane the battery chicken process is by, er, raising hundreds of battery chickens. Then there's tonight's Jamie's Fowl Dinners, which again is about the cruelty exposed to battery chickens – except that people will listen more to Jamie Oliver because, unlike Hugh, he looks like he washes occasionally.

Then, less relevantly, Gordon Ramsay – a man who advocates eating everything from horses to newborn babies' eyeballs on his ridiculous F-Word TV show – is going to cook some food and not mention battery chickens at all.

But back to Jamie Oliver. We all know that Jamie loves a good campaigning session, whether it's a campaign to make children eat food they obviously aren't interested in or a campaign to, um, wander about your enormous garden cooking food that one of your employees has sowed, grown and harvested for you. So when Jamie Oliver attacked the battery hen issue for Jamie's Fowl Dinners, he did so with an alarming amount of gusto.

So much gusto, in fact, that he pissed off his paymasters. You see, ahead of Jamie's Fowl Dinners, Jamie Oliver wanted to have a public debate about chicken farming with retailers, including Sainsbury's – the supermarket that pays him £1.2 million a year to advertise it by mooning around like a kind of oversized gammon-obsessed Edwardian Little Lord Fauntleroy. But Sainsbury's didn't show up, leading Jamie Oliver to howl the following angry diatribe:

"It is shocking that the people that I work for did not turn up on the day. I do not know why. The fact that your PR department has not even got the confidence to turn up and talk about what you do … how dare they not?"

Oddly enough, Sainsbury's has realised that it pays Jamie Oliver to gurn around babbling about its sausages and not to severely hurt its share prices by openly criticising its animal welfare record and so, after an apparently tense phonecall between Jamie Oliver and Sainsbury's boss Justin King, Jamie Oliver has written to everyone who works for the supermarket to apologise for his big gob:

"I am happy to confirm what I have said on several occasions: that Sainsbury's has the most to be proud of on this important animal welfare issue. Indeed I would not have continued working with Sainsbury's for so many years if I did not believe that you were showing real leadership. Your team have been particularly helpful."

With Jamie Oliver's Sainsbury's contract still up for renewal, it seems that this Jamie's Fowl Dinners fuss might have cost him a lucrative gig. Of course, the extent of the damage will be seen once Jamie's Fowl Dinners is broadcast on Channel 4 tonight – it looks like essential viewing for everyone.

Except us. We'll be watching Big Brother Celebrity Hijack instead. That Victor, he's nuff grep innit.

Read more:

Jamie Oliver says sorry to Sainsbury's staff over chicken outburst – Guardian 

There's nothing that Jamie Oliver likes more than a good campaign – the campaign for better school dinners, the campaign to train the disadvantaged to be chefs, the campaign for titting around advertising Sainsbury's surrounded by elves.

But they're all old-hat, because Jamie Oliver wants to campaign for something more raw, something more visceral, something that'll frighten the general British public into never eating ever again. That's right – Jamie Oliver is going head-to-head with the battery-farmed chicken industry. In a one-off Channel 4 show – Jamie's Fowl Dinners – to be broadcast next year, Jamie Oliver is promising to graphically demonstrate the battery-farmed chicken's rearing process. Fingers crossed this will involve Jamie Oliver being shut in a tiny, airless, artificially-lit box for the rest of his life where he'll be forced to breath his own shit-fumes until a farmer cuts off his nose and mouth.

We don't know about you, but it'd certainly be the only way we'd learn.

Now that Delia Smith's back in the cookery business, all the other TV chefs have had to raise their game sharpish. Already, a fear-stricken Nigella Lawson has announced that all her shows from now on will be presented in her bra and pants, but just about every other TV chef on the planet has decided to go down the social-consciousness route in order to get the public to eat better food instead.

Next year Channel 4 is launching a Food Season, where all of its chefs stop joking around for long enough to deliver very serious lectures about how eating Pot Noodles from time to time makes us all worse than Hitler. Gordon Ramsay is making Cook-a-Long-a-Gordon, a live show where he'll cook some food and you'll all cook it along with him at home. Plus that creepy autopsy man is doing a show where he'll chop open a dead fat person's guts and crawl around inside them going "Urgh! Isn't he fat?"

If that's not enough, there's also going to be another show all about north-Pakistani Shimshal cuisine – one of the healthiest on Earth – which seems to have the exclusive purpose of making obnoxious Islington mothers screech "Well actually I only fill Noah's school lunchbox with mud oven-baked dildongi now," whenever they're around their equally hateful friends.

But the star attraction of Channel 4's Food Season will be Jamie's Fowl Dinners presented by Jamie Oliver and Hugh's Chicken Run presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, both designed to make us realise that intensive chicken farming isn't the five-star dream holiday for chickens that literally none of us assume it to be. In the latter show, Fearnley-Whittingstall will try to create his own intensive chicken farm before, we're promised, bursting into tears at the humanity of it all.

But it's Jamie's Fowl Dinners that's got everyone excited, because Jamie Oliver loves a good campaign. Who can forget when Jamie Oliver tried to destroy childhood obesity by making schools only sell dinners that kids would rather starve to death than eat? Or when Jamie Oliver went to Italy to campaign for, um, pasta? Or something?

And Jamie's Fowl Dinners looks set to be Jamie Oliver's most shocking campaign yet, because in it he'll research battery-farming methods and then cook a gala dinner that demonstrates all the awful things that happens to chickens during it. And there's more – the gala dinner is for famous people, and you know that something's important when Martine McCutcheon wrinkles her nose at it, don't you. Channel 4's head of factual entertainment Andrew Mackenzie said:

"Jamie's simple message, in quite an overt way, will be, 'If you know what happens to a chicken before arriving on your plate, would you change the way you think about chicken. Would you still eat it?' Our standards are not as good as some in Europe. Even people who buy free-range chickens may not be aware that every time they eat cake, the eggs aren't likely to be free range, so they are essentially endorsing the battery hen."

Needless to say, a 9pm Channel 4 season about ethical farming practises fronted by Jamie Oliver is probably only going to attract the kind of smug, Smeg-owning, middle-class Jemimas who'd rather shit fire into their child's mouth than let it anywhere near a Monster Munch, while all the other fat lards watch Trinny And Susannah Destroy The Nation's Self-Esteem on ITV instead.

This is how it will be, because this is how it's always been. But while this fat-mouthed, self-satisfied, holier-than-thou sermonising couldn't be more annoying if Jamie Oliver personally jabbed you in the eye with his finger every other word, you can't deny that Jamie Oliver is doing something. And at least as celebrity campaigns go, it's a few hundred notches down the mental scale than endorsing rat milk to the world.