2007-08-27 - 6:42 a.m.

I find cookery programmes soothing. I often lounge around in the lounge in my loungewear watching some kitchen kaiser chopping stuff up and enthusing about seasonal produce in lascivious tones. I’m not sure why cooking works on TV but it does, in a way that dusting or bed-making wouldn’t. Years ago, when I was an angry young man, I used to think cooking was kinda fruity, a task about as appealing as stitching one’s own trousers. How wrong I was. Foolish gannymede! Cooking is a wonderful activity that really helps to structure the day and usher in the purple shades of evening. Once you get the cooking inclination you inevitably start thinking about what to cook for dinner as soon as you wake up. You then attempt to balance the moldering contents of the fridge with what you actually want to eat. Throwing stuff out is a horrendous experience, akin to drowning a family pet. Sometimes you’ve just gotta bite the bullet, kid, and say ‘hang the risotto, I must use this savoy cabbage before it wilts!’ These acts of self-denial build character.

Where was I? Ah yes, TV chefs. My favourites, in no particular order, are: Gordon Ramsey, Keith Floyd, Anthony Bourdain, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and... Ainsley Harriott. The latter is very much the odd man out, and not just because of his ineptitude. The other three are serious chefs who can actually cook, y’see, whereas Harriott is a guffawing Uncle Tom with a knack for pensioner-pleasing buffoonery. Harriott’s talent lies not before a saucepan, but before an afternoon gallery of stupified codgers. The man is a master of small talk. Whether presenting Ready Steady Cook or Ainsley’s Meals in Minutes, Harriott can be relied upon to coo, giggle and fawn over that day’s bewildered participant. As someone bedeviled with a combination of shyness and violence around strangers, I marvel at how gregarious is he. Upon learning that his guest is a nurse Harriott will instantly don an empathy hood and trill some banality like, ‘Ooh, it’s hard work, isn’t it, I bet you like a good meal after your shift, don’t you?! Eh?' The weird thing is, you get caught up in it; before you know what’s happening you find yourself thinking, ‘I bet she DOES love a good meal after her shift!’ The man is hypnotic. I also think he’s completely off his nut. How else can you fire out these blandishments with such manic enthusiasm? Nobody but a psychopath can get so worked up over the excruciating trivialities of the Great British public.

He’s a big lad is our Ainsley. A real handful! When he’s not ejaculating some nonsense about his Jamaican heritage - ‘Cut up dat mango, mon!' – Harriott can be relied upon to indulge in double entendres that are not only strained, but have also been freeze-dried and left to hang for 3 months. It’s quite bizarre, really. If one of the wacky chefs on Ready Steady Twat (as Gordon Ramsey so wittily calls it) is attempting to cook chicken goujons in the allotted 20 – ha!- minutes, you can count on Harriott simpering something moronic and vaguely filthy like, ‘Go on, grab hold of that goujon, darling!’ It doesn’t make sense but he says it with such wild-eyed conviction that you momentarily forget that nobody has ever referred to his penis as a ‘goujon’. Here's the scene: a sweaty, harried chef will be attempting to cook about 6 different meals with some ludicrous ingredients when Harriott will bound over and cry, ‘Ooh! The peas are boiling away nicely there, we love some nice peas, don’t we ladies and gentlemen? My wife loves putting her peas in my hot water! My Gran always used to say, “Ainsley ma boy, you stay otta da hot wat-ah, mon!”’ He gurns like a madman and the audience titter amongst themselves, safe in the knowledge that the Black and White Minstrel Show never really went away.

Harriott’s willingness to mug and caper is what I love about him most. He flies in the face of all these macho chefs who compensate for having a girly job by swinging their dick-knives about. For Harriott, cooking is the biggest giggle there is. There is no ingredient that can’t be used as stock for smut, and no remark too mundane to be seized upon and frothed over. Drop so much as a spoon and Harriott will pounce: ‘Ooh! He’s dropped his spoon! Let’s hope that’s all he drops, eh?!’ Mention that you work as a cleaner and Harriott will seize the opportunity to indulge in breathless endorsement: ‘Ooh, I love giving my house a good clean, don’t you ladies and gentlemen? A bit of the old spring cleaning, eh? We love that, don’t we, spring cleaning? Look how he’s peeling that parsnip, ladies and gentlemen!’ If nothing else, I appreciate Harriott’s achievement in becoming a housewives favourite despite being big, black, bald and batshit crazy. At least two of those attributes are usually barriers to daytime TV stardom. Harriott seems to regard foodstuff as a cross between a naked lady and a swift kick to the bollocks. That is what one is led to believe after seeing the lunatic facial contortions he pulls on the covers of his rubbishy cookbooks and title credits. A typical pose will see Harriott holding a courgette aloft while boggle-eyed and open-mouthed. It’s a mystery why he feels the need to do this, to present mere items of food as otherworldly and rude. Why can’t he just hold a fish without looking like a mongoloid Kenneth Williams? Not that I’m complaining.

Here’s Gordon Ramsey’s recipe for this entry, should you wish to try it at home:

Get bored.

Add booze.

Write.

Cut and Paste.

Diary entry: DONE.

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