Over the Christmas holidays, there was only one place to go. No, not to the department store to sit on Santa’s knee (I’ve been cautioned by the police about that before).
Instead, it was much safer to stay at home and watch my favourite channel – the channel hardly anybody else but me watches, somewhere in the Siberian wastelands of Freeview, next to GREAT! and That’s 80s. I’m talking, of course, about Food Network.
I mean, yes, essentially Food Network is just a bunch of repeats of ancient cooking programmes, and I should probably get a life. But in these stressful times, I’m not sure what would I do without this reliably endless stream of blurry old cookery shows.
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Here, you can see every part of the Jamie Oliver lifecycle, from his post-pubescent ‘pukka’ era and tired dad phase to his modern incarnation as a grumpy health warrior who keeps taking the sugar out of all my favourite snacks. No matter what time of the day or night you put it on, there he is, massaging a chicken and backslapping his old mate Gennaro by a clay oven while his long-suffering wife struggles to contain her rage and Olivers of all ages bounce off the walls.
Then there’s the Barefoot Contessa, AKA American cookery icon Ina Garten, speaking to us from the past in her palatial home in the Hamptons. She prepares truckloads of crostini and Martinis for her husband Jeffrey, who looks like a kindly professor in a 90s movie starring Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock. Nothing bad could happen at Ina’s – apart from a coronary from all the butter and salt. She is lovely, twinkly and very soothing, and I just want her to wrap me in a muslin cloth and gently place me in the proving drawer for a nice long sleep.
