Ready Steady Cock

If you ever meet me, it’ll quickly become apparent that I like food. Mainly due to my big wobbly belly, and the fact that I’ll almost certainly be stuffing my face with something or other. Food is one of my big passions – eating it, cooking it, reading about it and watching TV programmes about it. In fact, cookery shows are one of the few things that I watch on television. I’ll watch anything cookery-related, really – from Two Fat Ladies to Two Hairy Bikers and anything in between. I’ll even endure Rick Stein’s moaning. Yup – I’m dedicated to the cause.

One cookery show that always fascinated me was Ready Steady Cook. If you don’t know the premise, it’s pretty simple – two chefs have to make a meal in 20 minutes using ingredients that are bought in by a contestant. The meals are then tasted by the contestant, and the studio audience vote for a winner. It’s a nice idea, watching how professional chefs can turn the most surprising ingredients into something that looks edible. As with any programme of this nature you sometimes get a joker – someone who thinks that it will be funny to turn up with a Pot Noodle, a half eaten nectarine and a live goat, but I have to say, the sweet and sour goat with stir fried Pot Noodle did look delicious.

Aside from picking up cookery tips and generally enjoying the mayhem of watching people trying to prepare food under pressure, the one thing that keeps me watching Ready Steady Cook is the presenter – Ainsley Harriott. I hate him. Picture the Cheeky Girls running their fingernails down a blackboard whilst chewing loudly. Now times the irritation factor by ten. That’s Ainsley Harriott. He’s like the bastard lovechild of Lenny Henry (at his most annoying) and Uncle Fester. 

From the first time he opens his (frankly immense) mouth you know he’s a bit of a knob. He doesn’t pronounce the word ‘welcome’ correctly, and it drives me nuts. Liten to him try  – it’s painful. “Well come to Ready Steady Cook”. No, you moron, it’s ‘welcome’, not ‘well come’! Haven’t you ever noticed that you’re the only person  in the whole English speaking world that pronounces it like that?! Jesus!

And it goes downhill from there. The way he talks to the guests (especially the female ones) gives me the creeps. Which is odd, considering that he’s about as camp as a marching band, dressed in hotpants, playing the hits of Erasure. He somehow manages to turn the most innocent comment into some sort of inappropriate double entendre (which I also have ability to do, but would probably reign it in somewhat if I was hosting a television programme).

“Ladies and gentlemen – here’s our first guest, Doris, aged 74 and recently widowed. Let’s see what she’s bought…Ohh look! It’s a nice juicy peach. Cor! I bet you like a nice bit of peach don’t you Doris? I bet you LOVE it, don’t you, eh? Juicy peaches, eh? Corrrrrrrrrrrrrr, you dirty girl. WHAT AM I LIKE EH, LADIES AND GENTS?”. All accompanied by some disgusting leering at the camera and invasion of poor Doris’ personal space. You can see her thinking “Oh God, why did I agree to this? No one said he was going to touch me….”

But I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s mesmerisingly awful. Like when you were a kid, and you peeked out from behind the sofa to watch Doctor Who, even though you knew it scared the pants off you – I watch Ready Steady Cook with my hands over my eyes, peeking out through the gaps in my fingers, wondering what the hell he’s going to say or do next. The things that he comes out with are incredible. I once saw an episode where one of the chefs burnt something they were cooking. They made the usual joke that it was ‘chargrilled’ – Ainsley picked it up, gurned into the camera and said – and this is no word of a lie – “Chargrilled? That’s blacker than me, that is!” Everyone else on the programme went quiet, presumably thinking “Did he really just say that?” I mean – how do you follow that? (Extreme violence isn’t really an option, sadly).

The other thing that makes Ready Steady cook unmissable is watching dear old ‘Ains’ try to cook. And failing. Allegedly, the man was once a chef, with pretty good credentials (if his wikipedia page is to be believed) but you’d never know it by the hamfisted attempts he makes at cooking on the show. I’ve seen it on more than one occassion where he’s ‘helped’ the professional chef by adding some ‘clever’ twist or other, and completely ruined a dish.

“I’ll just sprinkle some icing sugar on there…”

“What are you doing Ainsley? That’s a beef casserole”

“OH. WHAT AM I LIKE, EH, LADIES AND GENTS?!”

“You’re a knob”.

Weekly Poverty Parade

This weekend I had an eye-opening experience. I went to the local car-boot sale.

I don’t recall ever having been to one before – in my unashamedly middle-class upbringing, it’s not something I was ever even really aware of. Now I know why. In the same way that any decent parent doesn’t teach their children about rape, starvation, death, destruction, Celine Dion, and other such distressing things – my parents shielded me from the horrors of the car-boot sale. And for that, I can only thank them.

But yesterday, for the first (and possibly last) time I ventured to what the Americans call  a ‘flea market’. Whilst I was walking away, I couldn’t help but think that ‘leprosy market’ would be more appropriate. I didn’t really have much in the way of pre-conceptions – apart from that my wife had been the week before and when she showed me what she’d picked up, and told me how little she’d paid for it – I was actually impressed. So secretly, I thought I might walk away from this experience laden with loads of new goodies, having shelled out about a quid.

I was wrong.

Upon arrival in the huge field, I was immediately struck by the scale of the thing. Hundreds upon hundreds of cars – either parked in the ‘parking field’, or in the ‘sellers field’. Wow. These things are popular. Must be good, I reckon. Wrong again, stupid. We wandered into the sellers field – my wife was mostly looking for toys for our son – I was mostly looking for CDs, DVDs and musical instruments. For me, obviously. The first thing that struck me was the bizarre range of stuff that people were selling. On one side there was a stall selling homemade cakes (poisonous, for sure) and opposite them was someone selling – and I’m not making this up – boxer shorts. Second hand boxer shorts. Once I’d seen that I quickly got a good idea of the sort of people that were here. I was surrounded by people that think that selling and/or buying soiled underwear is acceptable. That’s not a good situation. Not good at all.

Stumbling on, we walked past car after car – each one with a rickety table stood by it, and an array of rubbish on it. It looked like these people were trying to sell literally anything they could find. In some cases I suspected that they’d swept all the stuff out from the back of the fridge and tried to sell it. “What’s that? A Kellog’s Frostie covered in fluff? I’ll give you 10p for it”. Broken stuff, useless stuff, stuff that looked like it probably carried disease, clothes that had clearly not only seen better days, but had probably also seen the death of the wearer (I discovered that it’s impolite to say “No way! Someone probably died in it!” when someone shows you a child’s dressing gown for your son).

And then, occasionally, very occasionally, there’d be something that might’ve been worth buying (aside from the Steinway grand piano that was advertised, but I think they may have been asking the wrong people to part with £6500. Ten out of ten for trying, though). Quite early on in the day (I think we were there for about 48 hours in total. It seemed that way, anyway) I spotted a set of bongos – they looked quite good quality, too. So I asked my wife to ask the stallholder (or whatever these people call themselves) how much they wanted. The answer was five quid. Now I’d learned from listening to other people buying stuff, that the average price of any item at a car boot sale is 20p. So I was reluctant to pay a fiver for some scuffed drums (that were probably stolen anyway). I hesitated. And that, dear reader, was my mistake. Some toothless harridan stepped in – quick as lightning – and offered £4. And the woman accepted, the money changed hands and she was gone. Before I’d even had the chance to pretend that I couldn’t afford £5. Unbelievable. I was mid-purchase and she came and stole my bongos.  I was raging.

So raging that I needed a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich to calm me down. It was suggested that the best food and drink was to be had from some caravan or other – so we wandered over there – got our hot drinks and our food and sat down. My son was fascinated by all the dogs (SO many dogs!) so he was in his element. And I was eating bacon and drinking tea, so I’d calmed down a little bit. And then something genuinely scary happened. My son decided to put his hand into my wife’s still steaming cup of coffee (he’s only 11 months old, and therefore can be forgiven for doing such things). My heart leapt as I saw what he was doing, and my missus grabbed his hand and pulled it out. Rather than screaming and waving the sizzled-stumps-where-his-fingers-used-to-be about – he calmly took his hand away and carried on making strange noises at a dog. We were all relieved, but a bit baffled. How on earth did he stick his fingers in scalding hot coffee and not get… well… scalded?! The answer was soon apparent. When we looked in the coffee cup we saw that there was a layer of brown sludge on the top of the drink. Like custard skin. Only made of coffee. And fortunately, too thick for a tiny child’s hands to penetrate. Thank God we hadn’t been in a decent establishment.

The day went on, pretty much as before – sifting through tables and tables of junk in the hope of finding something worth buying. By the time we left, I think we’d spent 85p. And that’s the big thing that confuses me about car-boot sales. People were selling their belongings for a pittance. I mean – it looked like some of them were selling everything they’d ever owned (which admittedly wassn’t much, but that’s not really the point) – and yet they were selling it for next to nothing. If I gathered all my belongings and decided to sell them for 20p each, I’d walk away with about £40. But I wouldn’t, because that’s a MAD thing to do. I couldn’t help but feel that some of these people would spend a whole day of their lives selling most of their possessions and then, at the endof the day, when they count up how much they’d made, they’d go “Oh. We only made £3.40” Just DON’T BOTHER. Why waste your day for nothing?! It baffles me.

Still – it was all strangely fascinating. I’m torn between never ever going again, and going every single week just so that I can marvel at the madness of it all. We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll become a regular.

Perhaps not.

It’s a Cover Up!

I’ve got a problem. No – not that one – apparently the swelling will go down soon enough, and the pus will disperse – no – I’ve got a more serious problem than that. The issue is this – I really like hip-hop music or rap music, or whatever it is. But there’s nothing I hate more than talk of bitches, money, guns and all that bollocks. It’s a predicament, right? I mean – it limits my enjoyment of most forms of hip hop/rap. I’m basically limited to listening to Black Star, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Nomak (I don’t doubt that you’ve never heard of Nomak – but trust me – check out ‘Calm’. It’s a brilliant album).

Anyway – someone sent me this video the other day – it’s the perfect solution. Probably.

Well – that reminded me of one of my favourite cover versions. And I think you’ll like this…

Genius. Well THAT got me thinking about cover versions in general. And how sometimes the best cover versions are the unexpected ones – the ones where it takes it orginal song and messes about with it so much that the end result is completely different. So I’ve put together a few of those for your enjoyment. First off is China Drum’s cover of ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush. This is one of the musical discoveries that I owe to the legend that was John Peel. I remember hearing it on his radio show years and years ago and being bowled over by it. I still am. And I stil lmiss listening to John’s show.

It shouldn’t work, but I think you’ll agree that it kicks arse. Another song that kicks arse is ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast. It’s amazing. Pretty unlikely that a fat bearded chap with an acoustic guitar would be able to make it sound cool, isn’t it? WRONG! Check this out and think again…

How good is THAT?! It’s a shame that the band he’s in is rubbish. C’est la vie. Talking of rubbish band – here’s Hayseed Dixie – they’re categorically NOT rubbish (it was just a poor attempt a segue, see?). If you’ve not seen these guys, then you’re in for a treat. A bluegrass version of ‘Ace of Spades’? Yesh please!

If I could play the banjo like that then I’d be…well….loads better at playing the banjo than I am at the moment. Although, to be fair, I can’t play the banjo at all at the moment, so anything would be an improvement. But as we all know – playing real musical instruments is for losers. That’s why Shlomo is one of my heroes…

And before there was beatboxing, there was Bobby McFerrin. Covering one of my favourite Beatles songs.

Mind boggling performance. Mind bogglingly rubbish selection of images to show alongside it. Well – that’s that what you get for plundering YouTube, looking for songs, I guess.

Think of this as a cautionary video – here’s how NOT to do a cover version:

In their defence, I did laugh at that. A lot. See – even the worst music can brighten your day.

I probably ought to call it a day, there – but one last cover version – just to bring the mood down a bit. Imagine covering a song written by a man that shot himself, and making it even more depressing. Nice one, Tori…

Until next time, my lovelies! Adieu!

x

Come on, Children!

Picture the scene – you work for a toy manufacturer – you’re about to launch your new product. It’s a water pistol that shoots a kind of sticky goo instead of water. It’s a pretty cool product – the kids will love it. It’ll be a surefire hit. You’re in a meeting with the advertising people, they’re about to reveal their TV campaign for the ‘Oozinator’…

The lights dim, and a hush falls upon the room. Up on the giant screen in front of you the following advert appears:

What follows can only be described as an awkward silence. The room is full of people that want to say something, but can’t bring themselves to  -nervously looking around the room for signs that they’re not the only one that thought it looked a bit… well … you know… and desperately, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone else. After a few seconds of nervous shuffling, the meeting concludes.

I’d like to think that that’s how it happened – that there was a gathering of executives so polite, so fearful of saying something ‘non-PC’ that they didn’t have the nerve to mention to anyone that this advert is both vile and – let’s face it – hilarious.

Keep ’em coming, guys.