Never, Ever, Come Dine With Me

Philip Keightley

Come Dine With Me is perhaps the one television programme that is most representative of consumer demand at the moment. Yes, more than Strictly Come Dancing or Big Brother. It has everything. It is such a cleverly and tactically created programme. It has all the key ingredients (pun intended) of a successful show. It has food. Tick. It has ‘real' people. Massive tick. It has bitching. Massive, massive, enormous tick with bells on. In addition to these core ingredients (apologies), it is on all the bloody time. Literally, I challenge you to find a day when the Channel 4 / More 4 brotherhood does not include at least several hours of this offensively bland, pointless nonsense. Honestly, I do challenge you to do this. I haven't done it myself, but I am prepared to eat my hat or any other item of unpalatable (ahem) material if I am wrong. You can tell the audience that's watching it by the advertisers. Middle of the road, mid-range, mass-produced, sickly-sweet, horrible, ghastly, beastly, plonk from the ‘new world'. Forget the new world. In the real world, if any guest turned up to my house brandishing such a badge of ignorance, I would swiftly banish them from my house, never to return. Or throw them in the cellar until they learned what was best for them. Whichever.

Now you see I quite like food television as a rule. I'm interested in food. But I'm interested in good food. Cooked by people that are specialists in the cooking of good food. Chefs for example. I've no interest in watching a moron struggle with the concept of pouring boiling water on a Pot Noodle.

But Come Dine With Me is not about food. It's about people. And for the most part, really annoying, irritating, moronic people. The sort of people that really want to go on Come Down With Me. That should be reason alone for them not to be allowed on the show. It's like referees. Everyone agrees referees are annoying. Anyone that actually wants to be a referee should be immediately banned from doing so. People should be dragged kicking and screaming into refereeing. Perhaps former players that really understand the game. They should be made to be referees because importantly, they know what they are talking about. They don't just want to be an officious centre of attention. It should be the same with entrants on Come Dine With Me. Rather than actually let anybody who applies go on the show,  it should be people who actually can cook, are nice, interesting people, with something interesting to say and who for example, over dinner, you might actually want to spend more than five minutes in their company without repeatedly plunging forks into your own kneecaps to save yourself from burning down their house there and then - they should be the ones who are dragged kicking and screaming on to the show. That would be a nice show. It would have interesting, well cooked food and you would be able to listen to interesting, intelligent, nice people, getting along and discussing the food they have been served with a little more credibility.

So, why am I so angry about this? Well, for one thing, I'm always angry, so that's nothing new. But secondly, I caught the end of what I presume was The Food Programme on Radio 4 this lunchtime during which, some woman said that Come Dine With Me represents the future. It's what people want she said. People don't want to watch celebrity chefs. They want to watch real people making food. I have a number of issues with this. Firstly, the people cooking the food on Come Dine With Me are not real people. They are actors. They may not have their equity card, but they are actors. Sadly, they are very poor actors. They can't cook. They can't host. They presumably cannot operate within normal society. What they all have in common however is that they want to be on TV. These are the people that actually want to be celebrities, and for that very reason they should be banned from doing so. Whilst, I don't necessarily want to read about Jamie Oliver's private life or welcome the celebritisation (I've made that word up) of any chef, I am interested in what they can cook. Because they are trained. Because they are good at what they do. And please remember Food Programme Woman, without all the interesting celebrity chef programmes, there would be no Come Dine With Me at all and most of the population would still be using rocks to hammer open baked bean cans, or simply phoning a take-away. Again. I have always liked to gauge people on whether you'd like to go for a pint with them. Jamie Oliver, most certainly. Damned good at what he does and bloody nice bloke too. Has there ever been one person on Come Dine With Me that you would happily go for a pint with? No. There hasn't. And that's saying something as it is on all the damned time. Seriously, how many people have been on Come Dine With Me by now. A million? And not one of them would I happily go for a pint with. Not only would I not go for a pint with them, but I would give them very strict instructions, written in crayon if it is easier for them to understand, to never, ever, not even if we are the last people on earth, come and dine with me. Not that anybody would want to after this blog post I guess.

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