Jamie's Ministry of Food Channel 4, 9pm Coming of Age BBC3, 10.30pm
They don't like Jamie Oliver's clever-dick grub in Rotherham. Radicchio? Rosemary? Basil? Cooking? In your own kitchen? Poncy southern notions. Rotherham eats chips from t'chippie, sithee.
Two years ago, the Yorkshire town attained nationwide tabloid infamy when some of its less-nutritionally-aware mums were filmed frantically bunging their kids lunchtime takeaway burgers through their school's railings. They were outraged that Jamie's recently introduced healthy-school-dinners initiative was depriving their tubby little lambs of their daily intake of yummy fried grease, salt and sugar.
And so it came to pass that Jamie's Ministry of Food took the chirpy chef to Rotherham on a four-part healthy-eating mission that began with him confronting the fast-food battleaxe who'd been in the frontline of the Yorkshire blubberites' war on salad, Julie Critchlow. Jamie had called Julie a big fat scrubber on Top Gear. Julie wasn't happy. She started off by demanding an apology, going on to accuse Jamie of living in a bubble and being pompous.
Naturally, the instant Jamie said sorry, the pair were best pals. Oh dear. Was Jamie's Ministry of Food going to demonstrate modern-day TV's self-proclaimed power to heal all social ills by simply having a host who grins perkily while crying: "Crack on, tiger"?
Thankfully, no. Poor Jamie had his work cut out trying to get Rotherham to eat itself fitter, but work at it he did, motivated by sadness and unfocused rage. His cookery class featured the feckless, the gormless and the handless. Young mum Natasha had never home-cooked her kids a single meal, instead feeding them takeaway goop with about as much nutritional worth as the containers it came in. Clare was likewise unsure how to turn on her cooker's hobs, and about how to recognise when water was boiling. She also had a fear of touching raw meat and fish. You wanted to clout the pair of them round the earholes for not paying attention during home economics lessons at school.
But, of course, behind these slatternly underclass stereotypes lay the reality of desperate, vulnerable folk without money to spare on the bus fare to far-away supermarkets and shiny cookery utensils - something Jamie soon twigged. Happily, his pyramid cooking scheme - mates teaching their mates how to craft simple nosh - achieved a swift measure of success as Jamie's recipes for meatballs and spaghetti spread round Rotherham. There was real wonder and delight as Natasha's kebab-free five-year-old daughter pronounced the dish lovely.
Giddy scenes of public abandon then greeted a newly confident Clare and Natasha as they bashed out pan-fried salmon for the masses in a PR stunt in Rotherham town centre. Cheerleader Jamie cried: "Crack on, tigers!" over a PA system and pronounced Natasha a kitchen natural.
Then, six weeks in, grim reality descended once more. A weeping, guilt-stricken Natasha confessed to being overtaken by gloom and debt. She'd got her kids back on chips'n'cheese.
"I don't understand - but I do care," Jamie told her. You believed him. Jamie's Ministry of Food: the health of the nation depends on it.
For your own mental well-being, avoid Coming of Age like you'd avoid a super-sized barf-o-burger with fries. It's a coarse, slack-jawed farrago of sexual innuendo: Carry on on the Buses to Benny Grange Hill. It's aimed at teenagers, acted by teenagers and written by a teenager. Bring back conscription.
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