The Great British Menu

Those of you who know me know that I love food and I love cooking. I am also pretty partial to the odd cookery programme (or ten). I was an avid watcher of programme like Saturday Kitchen and Come Dine With Me long before they became popular. One of my favourite TV channels used to be The Carlton Food Network and a programme called Hot Chefs. I recently watched the new series of The Great British Menu. For those of you who don't know the format is this. Take a handful of professional chefs from around the country who are competing on a regional basis to have a dish put on at some banquet or other. The best few go onto the final and the top dish in each course gets put on at the banquet. The series was originally presented by former royal correspondent Jennie Bond.

2012 is the seventh series and the series has had the following banquets:

Series 1 (2006) -The Queen's 80th Birthday

Series 2 (2007) - British Embassy in Paris

Series 3 (2008) - The Gherkin, London

Series 4 (2009) - British Troops Returning from Afghanistan

Series 5 (2010) - Producers of British food

Series 6 (2011) - Sharing and Communities

Series 7 (2012) - The Olympics

The dishes are judged by a trio of "experts". These are Prue Leith, Matthew Fort, and Oliver Peyton. Prue Leith is by far the nicest of this bunch, a woman with a Michelin star and famous cookery school to her name. Matthew Fort is best known for being food editor of The Guardian and Oliver Peyton is an Irish restaurateur and former nightclub owner. Matthew and Oliver appear to compete to be the biggest food snobs and trade pontificating blows with each other that would suggest gastronomy is a life or death issue.

This appears to be an emerging trend in cookery competitions. Take Masterchef, once a quiet and contemplative programme hosted by Lloyd Grossman. It has since become gladatorial with the arrival of Greg Wallace and John Torode. The BBC tells us that, MasterChef judges Joh  Torode and Greg Wallace set a truly daunting challenge for the contestants as they continue their search for this year's best amateur cook. Against a background of music that is fit for the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie Greg announces, "Cooking does not get tougher than this!"

Well I'm sorry Greg but it's only a cookery show.