Gyrating Oul Dolls and Hysterical Chefs

The F Word, Channel 4, Wednesday
Radio 1's Big Weekend in Maidstone, Kent, BBC3, Saturday
NI Wags, BBC1, Friday

This sunny weather is great. I have been skipping along the street merrily, not stabbing people when they bump into me and even almost smiling at a baby. (I draw the line however at being nice to those netball-bibbed charity muggers who line up in zigzags trying to ambush me along Royal Avenue. They will feel my wrath come rain wind or shine.)     

But, as it has been gleefully pointed out several times in the North Belfast News office, my writing tends to suffer when things are going my way. A TV page where I've spent the preceding week raging against the world and all the muppets and loser exes in it does, it has to be said, make better copy.

But fear not. No matter how loved up on the sun I am, some people will always be suitable for a good slap around the bake, Captain Hook style. Yes, Gordon Ramsay is back.

I'm writing this on Tuesday morning, ahead of the new series of The F Word starting on Wednesday night, but I'm already approaching levels of take-off not seen on this page since Chelsea from Eastenders got out of jail. This is mainly because even seeing Gordon Ramsay on TV, who makes me wish more than anyone else that I was allowed to swear in the paper, has me screeching at the telly like a demented harpy anyway, even before I listen to what nonsense is coming out of his shouty little mouth. But now he's taken it to even more levels of arrogance.

Not only did he say that restaurants should be fined for the environmental crime of using food out of season – yeah, not hypocritical at all Gordon, when you have a restaurant in Tokyo that imports foie gras from France and lamb from New Zealand – but he then started to slag off Delia for using tins and frozen spuds in her cooking.

"I can understand maybe if you're a student and you have 15 or 20 quid a week to spend on food, but for the rest of us—", he blabbered, showing all the more how pretentious and out of touch the modern chef is about the food we, the great unwashed, eat. When I was a student I had a fiver a week to spend on food; as a single gal I spend about £15 now, and Delia's latest series was about the only cooking programme I have ever seen that reflected how most people on a budget cook. We love Delia.

 

Gordon also said her approach was like kicking chefs 'in the goolies', leaving me slack-jawed in the struggle to know which statement to shout at the TV first – why is Gordon Ramsay so obsessed with his goolies, and that I'd happily kick him there for free.

Elsewhere, Madonna has been annoying me as well, particularly with her antics at the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Maidstone, Kent last weekend. Now, I'm all for women of 50 not having to act like women of 50 – if men that age can pretend they're 20, as this week's hideous displays of bare chests and man boobs (mits) have proven, so too should the gals – but Madonna really just needs to get out of all our goddamned faces. 

It was the gyrating with the guitar, the 'sexy' shoving of Justin Timberlake into a wall two weeks ago (personally I'd shove him under a speeding truck), the 'I'm 50 but I still look great because I don't eat anything but knitted lentils and spend eight hours a day working out' attitude. Go away, Madonna. I tire of you.

Finally, I haven't watched it yet, mainly out of concern for my stress and blood pressure levels, but boy have I heard a lot about BBCNI's latest pathetic offering for  us Northern plebs on a Friday night – NI Wags. Please write about it, pleaded one of the sports journalists in the office on Monday, still visibly in shock by how bad it was. Watch this space for next week. Vacuous millies twittering on about handbags and fashion? I am already cracking my knuckles in anticipation.