One yell of a pitch battle
BACK tonight for another run we have ALDI’S NEXT BIG THING (C4, 8pm), the show in which small-scale food and drink producers compete for the chance to become largescale ones.
The means via which they hope to make such a leap, as in series one, is by knocking the socks off a lady called Julie Ashfield.
Julie is Aldi’s managing director of buying, responsible for every item which is stocked in its 1,000-plus stores.
So if she decides your product would be a hit with its customers, you could be forgiven for punching the air and yelling: “YEEESSSSS!!! GET IN!!!”
Personally I’d try to avoid doing that, just in case that Julie thinks: “Oh, dear, what a shame, this small-scale food and drink producer has now revealed themselves to be a moron.”
But, yes, punching and yelling is an option, I’m sure, should one wish to avail oneself of it. Each week’s episode, again as before, takes a different theme.
Tonight we meet six artisan producers whose offerings fall within the “dinnertime” category.
One of them is personal chef to the popular rapping person Stormzy, no less. Will Aldi choose to stock her meaty mac’n’cheese? We’re told it’s Stormzy’s favourite, which is suprising because I’ve not heard him rap about it on any of his records.
Another is a man offering a range of burgers in brightly coloured buns (a pink one, green one, blue one etc.). My own initial response is that they look horrendous. My response after hearing this man’s pitch is: “Ah, right, fair enough. But they still look horrendous.”
But it’s not up to me, is it? Nor is it up to this show’s presenters, Chris Bavin and Anita Rani. No, it’s exclusively up to Aldi’s Julie Ashfield.And she’s a hard lady to please. “We’re looking for tasty options that appeal to the whole family,” she reminds us.
“It needs to be nutritious, relatively easy to cook and not crate a ton of washing up. Plus, it needs to compete on price.”
In TV terms, this makes Julie one of those rare phenomena – the all-powerful judge.As a competitor, your fate lies in her hands, and her hands alone, a bit like the lady on INTERIOR DESIGN MASTERS WITH ALAN CARR (BBC1, 8pm), (who tonight gets to see what in God’s name the designers have done to some perfectly innocent cafés in Swansea).
Yes, Aldi’s Next Big Thing is one of those competitions where a public vote simply wouldn’t be appropriate. Partly because we viewers can’t actually taste the food, of course. But also because, if left up to us, I fear that the life-changing contract with Aldi may be awarded to whoever delivered their pitch without any trousers on.