Jamie Oliver is waging war on working-class people who eat junk food in front of gigantic flat-screen TV’s, with his new cooking programme ‘Jamie’s Money Saving Meals’, showing now on a, er, TV, near you.
In yet another round of the scurrilous ‘let’s bash the poor’ game, Oliver (worth an estimated £150 million), who built his reputation and fortune on his ‘cheeky chappie, one of the lads’ act, has demonstrated just how much he has lost touch with reality.
Does he honestly not realise why some people have large TV’s? He may be able to take his kids on exotic foreign holidays, day trips to farms, indoor play parks, etc but when your budget is severely squeezed and these are a distant dream, the TV dominating the room is a window on the world. Hemmed in by lack of transport and no money, how else are people supposed to entertain their families?
And when your only local shop is a Happy Shopper, with a restricted range of food selling at premium prices, where are we supposed to buy Jamie’s suggested ‘basic store cupboard ingredients’ (total price £150) which includes quinoa, sesame oil and kaffir lime leaves?
For someone who is supposedly championing cheap, wholesome food and a return to basic cooking skills, he’s certainly cashing in. Twenty recipes in his obligatory book to accompany the series require a food processor. A basic one is around £60. His branded version comes in at £150. Nice one, Jamie. And the cook book? That’ll be £26.
In addition, essential equipment includes three types of graters, a pestle and mortar and a griddle pan, and yes, he sells them all too. The graters alone will set you back £40. So much for saving with Jamie. He states, ‘the Sicilian street cleaner (has) 25 mussels, ten cherry tomatoes and a packet of spaghetti…and knocks out the most amazing pasta’. Oh spare me the middle-class vision of our European cousins. Patronising, offensive twaddle. His hypocrisy is breathtaking. The people he’s really targeting are the chattering classes who think austerity chic is an amusing distraction, not a grueling way of life.
I used to admire Jamie Oliver, but the only person laughing all the way to the bank is him.
p.s If you really want to, you can buy his new cook book for a heavily-discounted £9.99 at www.thebookpeople.co.uk