Cooking up a storm over moralising celebrity chefs

2:45pm Thursday 15th May 2008

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What with all the unexpected sunshine in the past week or so, I've been prematurely flung into summer mode and so found myself trotting down to Co-op to buy a punnet of strawberries for tea.

Just as I put them in my basket, I noticed their place of origin. Thank Gordon, they're from Hull. I was off the hook. However, my broccoli was less lucky - the incriminating blighter hailed from Spain and took the edge off the strawberries' angelic hue.

My heightened awareness of the birthplace of food this week is due to Mr Gordon Ramsay. Presumably in a hiatus from rolling around in his money, Gordon decided to join the long line of celebrity chefs turning food into a moral issue by declaring war on the importation of out of (British) season produce, and encouraging the country to source their grub locally.

Not content with merely plugging his message in BBC interviews and on his Channel 4 programme which runs year round, with a six-monthly change in name, Gordon thought he ought to catch up with his namesake, Mr Brown, and bend his ear about the whole affair. Which, of course, works out pretty well for the both of them - after all, if Tony can have Jamie, then Gordon will sure as hell milk his own celebrity culinary contacts for all they're worth.

So for a couple of weeks the nation nods solemnly and listens to a man whose vocabulary has, until this point, never extended past words of four letters. Then, of course, we'll all forget about it, not least Ramsay who'll realise that actually, people really do want asparagus at Christmas if they're paying £100 a head for dinner.

Of course, I don't have a problem with saving the planet. But sometimes it feels as though in order to save the planet, we must first deal with a graver problem - that of the moralising celebrity chef. Where have all these social consciences come from all of a sudden? First was Jamie Oliver and his school dinners, a project that turned him from naked chef into the less appealing naked cherubim. And since then we've had to endure his mug on telly at every available Corrie break, in spasms of excitement about his incredibly wholesome meals for under a fiver', which in the end seem not much more than a bowl of pasta with a tin of chopped tomatoes. It hardly inspires me to run to Sainsbury's to purchase this extortionately priced tagliatelle.

And then it can go the other way. The celeb-chefs are, of course, just like us, so they understand that our hedonistic and depraved lifestyles can't always stretch to haute cuisine. Step up Delia and her cheerless packets of Smash, for th ose who have time to sit down and watch a cookery programme for an hour but not enough time to mash a potato. Same goes for Nigella. I've lost count of the time she's sighed and pouted, whipping up her tarragon chicken in five minutes flat only to rush out of the house to attend to the other crucial elements in her life. The poor lass can't even find the time to eat at the normal times. No, instead she must sneak downstairs in the obligatory black negligee and fry some Mars Bars in lard because she's too, too busy not to.

Ladies, gentlemen - let's not forget what God put you on this good earth for. You're chefs! If you can't find the time to cook properly, then perhaps you'd better look for an alternative profession.

And, on the same note, if you do chose this cooking as your profession, can you please stay in the kitchen, swearing and seasoning, and leave the moralising to the more established pillars of society. Sensible people - say no to imported Braeburns, but only after you say no to Ramsay.