Odd couple with the perfect recipe

TAKE one bald, myopic, former greengrocer and add a cheerful antipodean chef. Unlikely as it sounds, that is the recipe for the most successful food show on British television.

MasterChef returned to our screens last week and sent a ripple through the schedules. The first show attracted nearly five million viewers to BBC1, leaving other channels trailing.

For a new show that would be impressive, but MasterChef is in its ninth series and has survived many presenter and format changes.

On paper, it simply shouldn’t work. Two middle-aged men grimacing and gurning their way through a conveyor belt of grim grub doesn’t sound like peak-time gold.

Yet it’s now a firm fixture of the spring schedules and the format has sold to 35 countries.

The secret of its success is undoubtedly what television people call “the chemistry”. For a start, the hosts are hugely likeable. The pair met when John Torode was head chef at Quaglinos, and Gregg Wallace supplied vegetables to the restaurant. That gives them a familiarity that cannot be faked.

That warmth clearly spills over to the contestants. MasterChef is one of the kindest reality shows on TV.

A plumber from Slough can walk into the room and proclaim they are a brilliant cook, delivering food everyone loves and with aspirations to run their own Michelin-starred restaurant.

Ten minutes, later the bravado will be stripped away as they struggle to cook a pancake and manage to confuse lamb and spam.

On other shows such foolishness would provoke a tirade of tearinducing abuse from the judges, but on Masterchef, it’s different.

Torode will wrinkle his nose; Wallace will suck in his cheeks but the pair will then go on to praise the seasoning and bold flavours before sending the hopeless hopeful home with reassurance that “pressure can get to anyone”.

Unlike Pop Idol, X-Factor and T he Voice, MasterChef is also genuinely life-changing.

Last year another Scot, Ross Boyce, went out early but still enjoyed the MasterChef boost.

“It allowed me to spend time training in the kitchens of amazing restaurants – a week in Simon Rogan’s two Michelin starred L’Enclume and, likewise, with Michael Smith at the amazing Three Chimneys in Skye,” he told me.

Then there are the winners. Edinburgh’s Sue Lawrence won series two and went on to build a career as a cookery writer. Tim Anderson, 2011 winner, is about to open a London restaurant, and last year’s victor, Shelina Permalloo, is to publish her first book.

So MasterChef is entertaining, lifechanging and kind-hearted. When it comes to peak-time TV, I don’t think you can ask for better.

THE big day was finally announced. It was, when it came, an emotional moment, and I will admit I had a tear in my eye but then, I am a bit of a quiet sentimentalist and it was my birthday.

There has been a long journey to get to this point, but it is about us as a nation, what we aspire to, how we see our future, our values, and importantly, how we get on with each other even when we politically disagree.

There is the trading of insults between Labour and SNP, which illustrated that part of this debate is still about who speaks for the soul of anti-Tory Scotland.

At First Minister’s Questions, Alex Salmond cited Labour MP Gordon Banks as having agreed with George Osborne on something, while Johann Lamont retorted by alleging that SNP MP Stewart Hosie had said something suspiciously pro-Tory.

Now, apart from the fact that Labour spent the whole day pouring scorn on the Nats’ big moment, unable to comprehend how petty and point-scoring they looked to all of us outside their bubble, this approach has larger consequences.

It reduces part of the most important debate in recent times in Scotland to the level of the schoolyard, and cannot be allowed to succeed.

That’s the day-to-day backdrop, but the debate has to acknowledge the bigger picture and have some substance. If we put this in its historical context, Scotland is engaged in a process of learning and growing which can be seen as one of maturing. This and other debates have shown that there are signs that we want to take more responsibility for our own actions.

Then there is the prevailing sense that we need to stop falling for the easy option of blaming others, whether it be Westminster, the Tories, the English or something else external, and accept that the grievance culture debilitates and diminishes us. And that whatever else independence might or might not do, it would allow Scots to start to look more honestly at ourselves.

There are many compromises involved in what is currently on offer in the SNP vision of independence with which the Greens and other radicals are unhappy.

Yet, what is urgently required in this, and can involve thoughtful Labour, Lib Dem, and even the occasional Tory voices, is a debate on the detail, potential and vision of what self-government is and what it can achieve.

What this is can be mapped out. First, it would embrace, postbubble, post-crash, talking about a different economy, one which is not dominated by the City, finance capital or property speculation. And it would explore the principles of a political economy different from the discredited Anglo-American capitalist model.

Second, it would begin to outline the contours of a more inclusive, compassionate welfare state and a sense of shared citizenship. It would be against the current punitive Westminster plans, but it also would address what we do about the missing Scotland, the generation lost in the 1980s, and the potential of it happening again.

Third, it would embrace the idea of the public realm which isn’t in hock to privatisers and outsources (take note SNP of what you have done with Serco on the Shetlands ferry service, or Labour’s costly legacy of PFI/PPP). But it would also address the power of producer interests (such as the pitfalls of the Labour-EIS alliance on education).

Fourth, this would entail devising a route, however difficult and longterm, and involving all sorts of short-term compromises, towards a nuclear-free Scotland, and the removal of Trident and weapons of mass destruction from the Clyde.

Finally, there is the desire for a distinct Scottish voice at the international table, one which is very different from the increasingly discredited “punching above our weight” mentality which has so illserved the good ship HMS Britannia.

The above areas are ones about which we should be able to have an informed conversation, which occasionally rises above party divisions, and the understandable positioning on the independence debate.

If this is even possible in a small way, it will be of assistance in dealing with the challenge of the increasing problem of how Westminster sees Scotland, and the long-term rightwing turn of British politics.

There have been 30 years of Labour government since 1945, elected in four separate periods, and these did many things they and Scots, are proud of. However, Britain is, despite this, one of the most unequal places in the rich world; indeed, it could be said that this state of affairs is a creation of the Tory and Labour parties and their appeasement of privilege and reaction.

Then, we have the problem with what we could call “Andrew Neil Scotland” – the right-wing Scots diaspora view that inhabits influential parts of Westminster.

This presents a caricature of Scotland as a land of immaturity and wrong-headness, a world of “spend, spend, spend”, welfare dependency, and a cossetted, bloated public sector.

This grotesque account of modern day Scotland by Scots in places of influence in the Westminster world has two damaging consequences. It has an effect on part of the debate north of the Border, reinforcing doubts and negativity in those places where such feelings exist; and crucially, it strengthens an English sense of incomprehension and lack of interest in the real debate, dismissing us with a belief we are all “subsidy Jocks”.

That right-wing account is slowly eroding the shared social compact that underpinned the United Kingdom.

The growing grip of such cut-faster-and-deeper thinking in Westminster in centre-right thinking, means that whether opinion here is pro, anti or agnostic on independence, we have to recognise what unites us: rejecting pseudo-market vandalism and the rigged capitalism of the City. And have some degree of measured debate about the realm of what selfgovernment and independence can do to address the challenges and choices of Scottish society.