Gordon flashes the cash in his search for business buddy
IS Gordon Ramsay prime time BBC1 fare? It is the question you assume someone asked before commissioning Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars (BBC1, Thursday, 9pm).
It is not that the Michelinstarred chef lacks talent or watchability. He’s box office, always has been. It’s the ******* language, innit? Channel 4, not Auntie, has always seemed a natural home for the chef best known for boiling incompetent restaurant owners alive and skewering lazy cooks.
If the corporation is taking something of a risk with Ramsay it is on solid ground with the format of his new show. No soup bones about it, Future Food Stars bears a strong resemblance to the tried and trusted The Apprentice. A group of young food and drink entrepreneurs being put through their paces to win £150,000 investment from Ramsay– viewers will feel right at home from the off.
For all that, there are differences. You will not, I guarantee, find Lord Sugar starting the next series of
The Apprentice the way Ramsay begins his run of eight programmes.
In general this is a more positive Ramsay from the one usually to be found trying to sort out other people’s kitchen nightmares. This gang are just starting out and he treats them accordingly. Which is not to say he lets them get away with anything, as they soon find out when he sets them the task of running food stalls on the beach in Cornwall.
Of the 12, there is one Scot, Michelle, from Abernethy. Like the others she is already up and running in business, with her firm, Clootie McToot, making, what else, clootie dumplings.
Among the others are Jamie, who runs a mussel bar (and looks the spit of Liam Gallagher), Jen, maker of bottled cocktails, and Valentina, who specialises in vegan cakes.
Looks like another winner for Ramsay, though we’ll see how long he can mind that language.
If you have ever sat through one of many talent competitions on TV, stuffed as they are with shouty types who fancy themselves the next Lady Gaga or Freddie Mercury, the idea behind Anyone Can Sing (Sky Arts, free to view, Wednesday, 8pm) will seem far-fetched. Anyone can sing? Really?
Yes, says English National Opera. During the pandemic, the company worked with people who had long Covid, teaching them to sing as a way of boosting physical and mental health. The lessons learned were then applied to this new series, which aims to take six “vocally challenged” individuals and within three months have them singing on stage in Covent Garden before an audience.
They are really not kidding about the vocally challenged bit. More than 600 people applied to take part in the programme, and some of those who make it through to the final are winceinducingly bad. Others can hold a tune but are held back by other factors, such as Tourette’s, or a lack of confidence.
The six will be taught by vocal coaches from ENO. Nicky Spence, Sarah Pring, and Michael Harper are as far from the Simon Cowell model
of a judge as it is possible to be. Unfailingly optimistic, they applaud their students at every turn. At one point a coach cries, so moved is she with the change in a pupil who enters the room stooped and frail-looking, and leaves it with her head held high.
We soon see how the exercises in breathing, posture and much else can improve wellbeing. Even if you don’t learn to sing in three months some other good may come of trying the exercises. By the end of the first lesson improvements are already noticeable. But stage ready in three months?
It has been more than 20 years since Mary Whitehouse put down the remote control for the last time, and even longer since she was all over the media warning viewers about declining moral standards. Yet fascination with her continues, with first a BBC R4 programme, Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse (still available) and now
Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story (BBC2, Tuesday, 9pm).
The former teacher began with television but widened her remit to take in movies and the porn industry. Hannah Berryman’s film, which draws on a vast archive at the University of Essex, looks at the various campaigns waged, including one against Last Tango in Paris.
The question running through this two part series is a simple one: did Mrs Whitehouse turn out to be right? The answer is more nuanced than you might imagine as talking heads including Gyles Brandreth, Michael Grade, Beatrix Campbell, Ken Loach and Peter Bradshaw explain.
We also hear from two of the people who took Mrs W on, activist Peter Tatchell and millionaire pornographer and now co-owner of West Ham, David Sullivan.
This is a more positive Ramsay than the one usually to be found sorting out other people’s kitchen nightmares