Jamie Oliver's kitchen chef found dead

Kevin Boyle found dead - RIP

I hesitated at first as to whether I should put Jamie Oliver's name in this post. After all it's nothing to do with him that one of his original TV apprentices has been found dead. The name Kevin Boyle means little to anyone apart from his family and circle of friends. That's the thing about names. Famous names mean something. Why else would Sainsbury's have used Jamie Oliver's name other than to cash in on it. So the news media uses a famous name to highlight the death of a chef. It has been said that Mr Boyle would be remembered for being an "exceptionally caring person who devoted himself to his friends". That sounds an excellent epitaph.

But we may never have known of Kevin Boyle if he had not been associated with Jamie Oliver. Now we do. Fame used to be fifteen minutes worth for the average person, according to Andy Warhol. With the internet it is fifteen minutes plus a slice of eternity.

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Fat dogs and Englishmen go out for a take-out

One fat dog with human traits and trends

Last night we had fish and chips. It's a great meal, quite nutritional if cooked well. However, we only have it about once a month. We cook our own pizzas, and make our own chicken nuggets for the children. I've got a slow cooker, and we have cooked vegetables and we have salads (not just lettuce leaves!). I go regularly and suffer not from constipation or diarrhea. I'm not paragon of vitamin virtue but neither am I a glutton for culinary punishment. So I can't understand gartantuans and their problems.

Jamie Oliver is quite right to berate Michael Gove over food in schools. Because successive ministers have skirted round this. We have crap food in British institutions! Even in my uncle's London club the food was worse than school. If anyone complained the answer was "they like it like they remembered at school!".

My stay in hospitals, infrequent as they are, have been marred by the frightful food and the nonchalent attitude of the staff. The medical procedures I can't fault, but knives and stitches don't provide sustinence. FOOD DOES!

We are only fools to ourselves. Fools for letting government ministers feed us crap, both political and physical. What is wrong with cooking good, decent healthy food? Is in beyond the ken of these hospital administrators?

Unhealthy food is creeping back into schools. Doesn't surprise me. If people are weaned onto the wrong food, then given the wrong ideas about food generally, then we have an ignorant mass of people. Do they want to be so dim? I like confectionary, crisps, chips, etc. It's all tempting stuff. But I don't eat the stuff three or four times a day. Variety is the spice of life and is certainly the spice of food. All the programmes I've seen on fat people being given tasty food that doesn't blow them up further shows that they never ever thought of eating such stuff. Education is the way. If people don't know, let those who do show the way.

Nearly one quarter of British women are fat. Or obese, in the clinically correct jargon. The UK has more obese women than any other country in Europe, according to data agency Eurostat. It looked at 19 countries, found 23.9% of British women were recorded as being obese in the year 2008 to 2009. And no doubt many of those are smoking too!

Jamie Oliver may feel he's whistling in the wind sometimes, but I think his motives are right. Good healthy food never killed anyone. It's the over indulgence that is the killer.

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Obama asks "Where's my dinner?"

Obama hits town and London is bracing itself for a possible riot. Not necessarily because he's here. In fact, he's like royalty and showbiz rolled into one, so his adoring fans will be out there. No, the possible riot is because the G20 leaders are all going to sit down to discuss the world's problems. Problems which they never saw coming and for which they are reacting to rather than trying to be pro-active. Let's hope pro-action gets a look in.

Today bank staff are being told to dress down. Isn't it bizarre. At least they now realise they have made themselves unpopular but it must be some sort of recognition that they have to look "ordinary" (that is unkept and untidy!) in order to blend in! What would Captain Mainwaring think? "What's this, Pike? You're dressed in a very casual outfit. This is a bank, you know! Go home and smarten up, immediately!" "But Mum told me to dress down in case I got into any bother." "Stupid boy! There's a credit crisis on - who is going to get us out of this unless we all pull together!" The great irony is that we would not be in this mess if we had had proper bankers and not the corporate money shifters who were running the show.

So Obama hits town. They will all settle down to a grand dinner in No.10 for food cooked by Jamie Oliver. Well, he'll be overseeing a few other chefs, I suppose. They better get some fans blowing in the kitchens. He can get temperamental under heat. He's cooking for Obama & Co, not Harry Truman! Oliver's wife is expecting a baby any minute and he's told Gordon Brown that if the baby comes tonight he'll have to get another chef.

I was in Sainsbury's last night, looking over the "reduced items". During a conversation with another customer and the price reducer it was revealed that the store gets rid of £2000 of food a night. What a waste! My fellow customer said "You could feed the third world with that!". Well, not exactly, but if one tots up ALL the supermarkets in the UK the food wastage must be dire in the extreme, and the Third World would welcome some of it.

Jamie Oliver has had his run-ins with the supermarkets and he is not afraid to speak his mind. The G20 is getting all hot and bothered about money but it should be about the proper stewardship of money. In recent years it seems to have been equated with water. Turn on the tap and out flows MONEY!!

So, it needs to be a meeting of minds. If it gets too hot in that kitchen it won't be the ghost of Harry Truman getting to Oliver, it will be the current conflicts in his mind. It could end up with the dinner being cancelled!

"Where's my dinner?" asks a surprised Obama. "Dinner's off, mate! I've got a few things to sort out." replies the cheeky chappie in a rush.

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Delia deals out the chicken shit to Jamie Oliver and Co!

Delia Smith was once the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth pin-up cookery queen of the BBC. She came up with all sorts of wholesome food, described in rather bossy tones. No drooling over the food like the Barefoot Contessa!

Now Queen Delia has decided to cash in on what she delicately calls cookery cheating. The supermarkets and food producers are all over her like a rash. She's not cheating on spreading her favours though. They all get equal measures. She's got some great idea about making a shepherd's pie, which was topped with frozen mashed potato from the Aunt Bessie's range. Heinz, who make this, are predicting a rise in sales and are highly excited. Delia claims she's not benifiting from the supermarket sales. Maybe not directly, but via some sort of circuitous route to her coffers, no doubt!

But the real rub is that she poo poo's the stance of Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in campaigning against chicken cruelty. "I'll stick to teaching people to cook. I can't get into the politics of food." No, maybe not, but she can certainly make a buck or two from some poor clucker's misfortune to have spent it's life in a cage!

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Jamie Oliver gets egg on his face!

It had to happen. Just as soon as Jamie Oliver's campaign to eliminate the buying of battery eggs and stimulate interest in free range eggs gets underway, something happens. One of his restaurants is caught out serving up battery eggs. A group of farmers spotted the rogue eggs whilst having dinner at Fifteen Cornwall in Watergate Bay, Cornwall. A restaurant spokesman said it had been an embarrassing mistake and admitted Mr Oliver was very angry.

Some of the farmers were battery egg producers, who probably thought it would be a good wheeze dumping a load of chicken **** onto the campaigning chef. I'd think they would be better off thinking about the possibilities of switching to free range production, because if Mr. Oliver persuades the supermarkets to stock such eggs in large quantities they may be left behind.

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Jamie Oliver apologises to Sainsbury's

This is what happens when a powerful supermarket teams up with a highly individual and outspoken celebrity chef. If the outspoken chef goes off message the supermarket gets a bit narked. Currently Jamie Oliver is helping to boost awareness for the plight of chickens in battery cages and to push the purchasing of free range birds. Sainsbury's are, to their credit, trying to help, but they are still wary of customer reaction. After all, many of their customers are on low incomes so the cheap chicken deals are still attractive.

Oliver criticised the supermarket for refusing to take part in his TV debate, Jamie's Fowl Dinners, about battery bred chickens. He told reporters: "It is shocking that the people that I work for did not turn up on the day. I do not know why." However, the firm had claims it did cooperate with the show but admitted it did not participate in the debate.

A heated discussion has taken place apparently, but things are calmer now. Justin King, CEO of Sainsbury's is not totally hacked off with him, but he does have a £1.2 million contract to use as as a 'debating' prop!

More here....>

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Jamie Oliver's Chicken Chat

I'm watching Channel 4's excellent programme Hugh's Chicken Run with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It's running over three nights. Last night's show had him inviting Jamie Oliver to the chicken shed which the birds are tightly packed into. It's not pleasant for them, and Oliver was on good form in articulating their plight. Double-Barrell asked him if he'd like to cook one of them. "I've just seen Charlie here shit on his mate! NO! I wouldn't want to cook 'im". Hugh then asked Oliver what he thought of such an operation. Jamie looked down at the floor, with a carpet of white feathers before him. "Well, they're incredibly unfit freaks of nature!" came the reply.

That kind of summed it all up for me. Wretched existence for the birds, and when it comes down to value for money, not a lot in it over the free range birds. As a family, we went towards the free range some while ago. As the show pointed out, they taste better and they go further menu-wise.

Who exactly is kidding whom in this industry? One thing is for sure - they've got people working in it who are prepared to threaten others for publicising the trade!

See also the realities of egg production, as Jamie Oliver suffocates chicks on TV -

Did you know about this? I think Jamie puts it over quite well, without any sensationalism.



Jamie Oliverfood and drink

ALSO: Jamie Oliver apologises to Sainsbury's

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