LISTEN, forget about Trump and Huawei and Covid-19 for a moment. Here’s a more pressing concern. Should you put chips on a pizza?
That was one of the questions raised by Jay Rayner in this week’s The Kitchen Cabinet (Radio 4, Saturday). And what about pineapple? Or eggs?
In a Twitter poll of the programme’s listeners some 43 per cent suggested that chips should never be seen on a pizza (far too low a number, I’d suggest), while more than 11 per cent suggested eggs were a no-go, too. As someone who will eat an egg on nearly anything, I have to say these people are wrong. I’ve had pizzas in Italy with eggs on them, I’ll have you know.
There is a lot to be said for food on the radio. You might not get the pretty pictures of Rick Stein’s latest city break, but there’s room for ideas and opinions.
The Food Programme on Sunday (Radio 4), for example, looked at the importance of diet in relation to mental health. Turns out that processed food is just as bad for your brain as it is for your body.
The best diets are the ones you might expect. While the Mediterranean diet is, according to Professor Felice Jacka, “the king of diets”, traditional Norwegian, Japanese, and Chinese are also all linked to “better health outcomes”. Our western obsession with saturated fats and added sugar? Hmm, maybe not so much.
A conversation between Ready Steady Cook chefs Romy Gill, Ellis Barrie and Anna Haugh, meanwhile, revealed that often the people in the kitchen aren’t eating any more healthily than the rest of us.
Because of the full-on nature of working in a kitchen, “we all fall into this rut,” Haugh suggested. “Maybe we are a little bit busy, so we grab a burger. And then next time, maybe, we grab a pizza, or we grab a convenience sandwich … I’m a real devil for Super Noodles.”
Radio 4’s Desert Island Disc castaway this week was Annie Nightingale. Her account of her miserable early days as a broadcaster on Radio One, being assailed by sexist men on all sides, was as depressing as you might expect. Men, really, what are we good for?
Still, there was one ray of sunshine. She did add that one of her fellow DJs didn’t sink to the same depths: “Johnnie Walker was always kind to me.”
Always thought he was a decent cove.
Listen Out For: Don Black, Radio 2, Sunday, 11pm
Fresh from last week's Herald Magazine interview, lyricist and broadcaster Don Black pays tribute, as ever, to the Great American songbook.
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