World's Best Food Jokes

Well, I’m very pleased to say my new book, World’s Best Food Jokes, is finally done and available on Amazon here for the price of half a lager...

It was written with my good friend Dom Bailey and is a collection of hundreds of the best food gags foraged from the four corners of the Earth, as voted for by the International Symposium On Food And Cookery Humour. 

Ranging from vintage cheese jokes - How do you approach an angry Welsh cheese? - to curry gags - What’s a chicken tarka? - to celebrity chef jokes - What's the difference between Gordon Ramsay and a cross-country run? - to the far more fruity - What's the difference between marmalade and jam? - it will hopefully leave you holding your sides more than a dodgy, late-night kebab in Blackpool.

Anyway, I hope you like it. Here’s a sample...

Q: Why should you never insult an Italian baker?

A: Because he’ll beat the focaccia.

Most of the jokes are pretty short. But here’s a long one that I quite like that didn’t make the cut...

One day, a priest gets a bit bored and decides to go for a walk, and walks down past his church to a huge lake. He looks around and finally stops to watch a fisherman loading up his boat. The fisherman notices, and asks the priest if he would like to join him for a couple of hours.

The fisherman asks if the priest has ever fished before; the priest says no. He baits the hook for him and says, “Give it a shot, father.”

After a few minutes, the priest hooks a huge fish, the rod’s bending, and after an hour he manages to get it on to the boat.

The fisherman says: “Look at the size of that, that’s a huge fucker, father!”

The priest crosses his chest and says: “Ah, please sir, can you mind your language?”

The fisherman says: “I’m sorry father, but that’s what the fish is called - it’s called a fucker! And an enormous one it is too!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says the priest. “I didn't know.”

The priest gets off the boat and slings the fish over his shoulder and walks back to the church. He walks into the kitchen, and the bishop comes in, and the priest says: “Bishop, will you look at the size of this fucker!”

“Please father,” says the bishop. “This is a house of God, we don’t use language like that here...”

“No, you don’t understand,” says the priest. “That’s what the fish is called, it’s called a fucker!”

“Oh,” says the bishop. “I didn’t know. I apologise father. Do you want me to clean it for you? The Pope’s coming round tonight and we could have it for dinner...”

So the bishop takes the fish and cleans it, and Mother Superior comes in.

“Mother Superior, look at the size of this fucker,” says the bishop.

“My lord, what language!” says Mother Superior, blushing.

“No, sister,” says the bishop. “That's what the fish is called - it’s called a fucker! Father caught it, I cleaned it, and we thought we could serve it to the Pope when he comes round for dinner tonight.”

“That’s a splendid idea bishop,” she says. “Would you like me to cook it for you?”

The Pope comes round for dinner and they’re all sitting there, eating the fish, and he says “This is a magnificent fish, where did you get it?”

“Well,” says the priest. “I caught the fucker.”

“And I cleaned the fucker!” says the bishop.

“And I cooked the fucker!” says Mother Superior.

The Pope stares at them for a minute, rolls up his sleeve, pulls out a spliff and says: “You know, you cunts are all right.”

Parsley Soup: An Indubitable Hangover Cure

Don’t ask me why, but I find this soup makes a great hangover cure. Perhaps it’s because I associate it with the time I lived in London and would restore my flagging spirits and woollen head when I eventually rose on a Sunday afternoon, all a quiver with shakes and punched kidneys, and a liver a French farmer would be proud of, a dreadful thirst for milk, and vague recollections of the night before and the night before that, and disturbingly-vivid dreams of being captured by cannibals, and shrunken heads, and then I would wander out, and as the pub singer goes have a beer for breakfast and one more for dessert, and then head down to a pie and mash shop in Peckham, and fill myself with mashed potato.

Not the hideously-rich, sauce-like pomme puree stuff Marco Pierre White and a young, podgy Gordon Ramsay would knock out in those Harveys days, with the steaming potatoes straight into the Robot with a hod’s worth of butter and hot milk, and whizzed and topped up with more milk until it came out like pale custard.

But simple mashed spuds with just a suggestion of margarine and a cup of the river water they were cooked in. And soon, but never quite soon enough, everything would be alright with the world, and then I’d have that awful, kick-in-the-stomach start that tomorrow was Monday and I’d have to be somewhere dreadful like Hastings, with a notebook in my hand, braving the sneers and gob from the fag chuffers outside the magistrates’ court.

But it wasn’t the mashed potatoes and the dreadfully cheap and mean, but strangely acceptable Sweeney Todd pies, but the sauce, or liquor, that accompanied them. Made from, or at least claimed to have been made from, the Thames water that the eels were boiled in, with onions and pepper and bay leaves, and a garden of parsley so that there were more green specks than grey. I used to love mixing that parsley liquor with the mash and then covering the whole lot with a clattering of white pepper.

Anyway, they say food reminds you of hangovers, or vice versa. And I can positively posit that this very simple soup really does the job when it comes to banishing the evil-spirits aftermath of the morning after, when you wake feverishly with the taste of rum and lime juice in your throat, and a mint you know didn’t come from toothpaste, as you wake crumpled on the floor, the wood burner long gone out, and your face as ashen as the mound that remains of last night’s logs, and a Robben Island cold in your bones, your head rattling as though filled with dried acorns, and knowing you forgot to eat again.

And despite the hunger, there is very little you can face but parsley and potatoes, and certainly not last night’s hardly-touched kebab sealed with lamb-fat candle wax as it surely will be if the trails down your jacket are anything to go by, and then realising the pie and mash shop closed long ago, and besides you live in the country now and the nearest is a 39-mile drive.

And as you brave opening your eyes once again, and mentally scan the churlishly-empty pantry, and a dim hope ascends with bitter juice humming of rum, as you realise you’ve just about got enough ingredients to make a steaming pot of parsley soup. And an hour or so later, you’re very glad you did as you metal-scrape the last with bread, your spirits restored and last night’s bottles cleared, and a smugness that you remembered to put the bin out for once after tripping over next door’s cat, the apple missing like an England seamer, and then remember that the next day you won’t have to be in Hastings, but somewhere far, far worse.

PARSLEY SOUP

(Serves 2 with seconds)

2 medium onions

3 medium potatoes

Knob of butter

3 garlic cloves

One massive bunch of parsley

One litre of boiling water

Salt, pepper

Natural yoghurt

Cayenne pepper

Chop the onions  and add to a saucepan with the butter, and fry over a medium flame, stirring from time to time. Peel and dice the potatoes and add to the pan. Chop the garlic and add to the pan. Fry for a few minutes until the onions have softened.

Wash the parsley well in a tub of water to ensure any grit sinks to the bottom, then slice off the stalks and chop them finely. Add to the pan and fry for another minute or so. Boil a kettle and add about one litre of water to the pan.

Simmer until the potatoes can be pierced easily with a knife - about 15 minutes, depending on the flame and type of potatoes and what altitude you’re cooking at, and other immeasurables.

Chop the rest of the parsley and put in the pot and simmer for a minute, then blitz in a liquidiser or use one of those blender sticks, or just attack the soup with a potato masher. Season to taste with salt and pepper. It goes very well with a dollop of yoghurt and a generous dusting of cayenne pepper, if your stomach can handle it.

Gordon Ramsay Caught Lying About His Three Michelin Stars

Gordon Ramsay has been caught telling pork pies again after announcing he is to close his flagship restaurant for a revamp in a bid to keep his three Michelin stars.

The celebrity chef told American food magazine Bon Appétit he’d had a conference call with bosses of the French tyre guide on Friday to tell them that Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London, would be shut for two months for “an amazing new refurb”.

He said: “I think every five years at that level, to reposition yourself is important. We’ve got three Michelin stars, the longest time a British restaurant has had three Michelin stars. So every five years, it needs to be moved up.

“Because you get criticised easily. ‘Well, it’s not worth three stars anymore, he’s cashing in, he’s never there’ - all those kinds of things. So you gotta silence those critics by constantly reinventing.”

Reinventing? Perhaps it’s the truth the notoriously slippery chef is talking about in the taped interview. Because his restaurant in Royal Hospital Road has not held three stars the longest in Britain. Far from it. That honour is held by The Waterside Inn, in Bray, Berkshire, which has had three gongs since 1985 - a piffling 16 years before Ramsay got his.

Ramsay, 45, is right about one thing. He has had a lot of criticism for not being behind the stoves of his restaurants and for spreading himself too thin in his pursuit for world domination. Not least from some of his former lieutenants who emerged blinking from the shadow of his large posterior to open restaurants in their own name, without having the constant gall of Ramsay taking credit for their hard work while lounging around in the California sunshine.

But what has that got to do with a new paintjob and a bit of interior design? Is he so sick of the decor in his 45-seater eatery, if he can still remember where it is, that he can’t stand being there? Will the wonderful revamp mean he will spend more time sweating in his flagship kitchen, run by head chef Clare Smyth for the past six years, rather than parading himself in front of American TV audiences like a painted horse and playing MonkeyTennis? Unlikely if his past performances are anything to go by.

And how does a splash of sage green “silence critics” who accuse him of cashing in? Ramsay - who has just opened two new eateries in Las Vegas, Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill and Gordon Ramsay BurGR (GR, geddit?) and is to launch a London restaurant with David Beckham - has been cashing in and embellishing the past ever since he was in short trousers.

First, with his lie about having played first-team football for Glasgow Rangers, before his career was cut short by an injury, creating the myth of the tragically injured football star who re-invented himself as a chef. And secondly with his TV fame and the dark PR arts he uses to keep his name in (and out) of the newspapers.

As he goes on to say in the interview: “It (cooking) is a tough business. A very tough, demanding business. And it’s slightly Machiavellian in that you need to be strong, especially at this level.”

Slightly Machiavellian? I think Niccolo would have been proud. Perhaps he should say longest in the world in the next US interview, and say he was soccer captain for Manchester United. After all, it’s important to keep constantly reinventing.

:: Gordon Ramsay: A Cut Above The Rest?
:: From Ramsay To Rourke
:: Go Easy On The Ham Ramsay!
:: The Night The Roux Brothers Had Bread Rolls Hurled At Them
:: What's Next For Gordon Ramsay? Monkey Tennis?

Marco Pierre White Walks Out Of Radio Interview After Being 'Bullied And Insulted'

So what do we know about the cooking genius and dummy-spitting toy hurler Marco Pierre White? He’s a monster to live with and has a terrible temper, according to at least one of his three ex-wives. He was a notorious bully to his kitchen staff when he actually bothered to cook in his own restaurants, and once made Gordon Ramsay cry (I suppose you can’t blame him for the latter).

He peddles stock cubes for Knorr and regularly appears in adverts proclaiming that adding a meaty crumble to a meal will lift it out of a slough of saporific drudgery - words that would have choked the younger version of White when he won his three Michelin stars, working 18-hour days behind the stove, fuelled by strong espressos, red Marlboros, and regular delves into his ingredient drawer.

And it seems that like all bullying celebrity chefs with monstrous egos - Ramsay, James Martin, Gary Rhodes, and the seemingly mild-mannered, rosy-cheeked Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall etc - he is also very good at dishing it out, but painfully sensitive when it comes to tasting his own medicine.

As happened when White walked out of a radio interview in Australia yesterday after being questioned - in his words “bullied” - about his three ex-wives and his cooking skills. The final straw came during the Triple M Adelaide breakfast show when one of the presenters dubbed the TV chef a “rude prick”.

Dale ‘Louie’ Lewis and co-hosts Warren ‘Warrie’ Tredrea, Jon 'Blakey' Blake, and Ali ‘Ali’ Carle were banned by the Austereo-owned radio station, still cowering from the royal prank call scandal, from playing the interview this morning, but were allowed to discuss the controversial exchange, pre-recorded yesterday.

Lewis, a former Sydney Swans AFL player, incurred the celebrity chef’s wrath after raising the question of White's three failed marriages, asking whether his “first wives” had been “dismissed, for want of a better word, cos they can't cook, or didn't like your cooking?” Lewis then quipped: “Cos if you're the rude prick you come across on TV...I wouldn't be there long either.”

White tried to play down the marriage dig, but took offence at the language. He ended the interview, telling Lewis there was “no need for rudeness” before accepting the presenter's apology. “Rudeness is not having fun when it is at the expense of another person. You're a very rude man. And I hope your mother's not listening to this show today because she would not be proud of her son,” he said.

White told reporters later he was deeply offended by the remarks.

“To be honest, I was a bit off balance when it was said to me and I thought why should people get away with this? Why should they be allowed to bully people? It's why I said what I said. What's very sad is this is a radio show where children could be listening and to use that sort of language in front of children is wholly inappropriate.”

If it was for comic purposes, White said “it was scurrilous behaviour.” He added: “This is my third time in Australia in eight months and this is the first time anyone has shown me rudeness or disrespect. I just excused myself and left.”

He added: “To expose listeners and especially children to that kind of language leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not saying I've been a good boy all my life but you get to a stage in your life where you've just got to be corrected. It's called growing up.”

I’m sure the many chefs who suffered in White’s “SAS-style” kitchens, under a constant tyranny of personal abuse and savage aggression, will be amused to hear him complain of being “bullied” and the victim of bad language. Especially the poor chef who was once forced to stand in the corridor all night with his trousers down, telling every waitress that walked past that he had asmall penis. Talk about a case of pot kettle White.

TRANSCRIPT:

DALE LEWIS: Hey mate, married three times, was (sic) the first wives dismissed, for want of a better word, cos they can't cook, or didn't like your cooking? Is that an issue with them?

(Female host giggles)

MARCO: I just think of myself as being a lucky man that I found three women who wanted to marry me.

(More laughing by hosts)

LEWIS: Yeah, cos if you're the rude prick you come across on TV, I wouldn't be there long either. That's just me surmising what I've seen on TV

ALI CARLE: Marco, I wouldn't stand for that

MARCO: All you're doing is giving me insight into you as a person.

LEWIS: (laughing) Now he's analysing me

CARLE: (laughing) He's reading you

LEWIS: He can cook and he's a psychoanalyst

CARLE: Like a book, Marco. Now, you said

MARCO: There's no need for rudeness

LEWIS: No, no, no it was just

MARCO: I think you should say good morning to me, and good bye, because one, I take offense to being called that. I haven't shown you disrespect, I haven't been rude to you. I don't like being called that word. I'm very sorry.

LEWIS: Well, I apologise Marco. I was just trying to have some fun.

MARCO: Your apology is accepted. Rudeness is not having fun when it is at the expense of another person. You're a very rude man. And I hope your mother's not listening to this show today because she would not be proud of her son. Have a nice day, bye bye.

A Message In A Bottle To Rick Stein

You meet some very strange people in Cambodia. It’s a place full of misfits and loners. Expats escaping from something, or looking for something, and nearly always reinventing themselves in the process. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever come across such a high concentration of alcoholics, junkies, perverts, arseholes, and compulsive liars.

For instance, I met a guy the other day who said he was the executive chef of a group of luxury hotels. He walked into the bar, introduced himself, and then held court on his barstool telling us how difficult it was drumming the basics of hygiene into his Cambodian cooks. We got chatting and I told him about my dismal failure retraining as a chef and the book, Down And Out In Padstow And London, I’d written about my experiences.

I told him how the cheffing door had been opened when Rick Stein agreed to let me do a week in his Seafood Restaurant in Cornwall. The executive chef suddenly butted in.

“He’s one of my best friends!” he beamed. “He even sent me a long email when Chalky died. He loved that dog. He was devastated.”

He told me they’d done their chef training together in France, and hinted at the drunken nights they’d had. I listened on, but was thinking of something else. I’d been wanting to send the celebrity chef an email thanking him again for the opportunity he gave me, and how if he hadn’t, my book would probably never have been written.

But I’d lost Stein’s email address and knew if I sent a message through his PR people it would probably never get to him. I’d have more chance of sending him a message in a bottle from one of Cambodia’s soon-to-be-developed Robinson Crusoe islands.

So when the executive chef eventually paused to take a swig of beer, I asked if he’d mind passing my thank you letter on to the TV chef. He handed me a smart business card with his email on it.

“Not a problem,” he said, “Oh, we had some times together!”

Then he stopped suddenly and looked slightly angry and bitter.

“Do you know the difference between him and me? Do you know how he got to where he is and I didn’t?” He didn’t wait for an answer: “Luck!”

A couple of days later I wrote a thank you letter to Stein and emailed it to the executive chef. I didn’t hear anything back. Not even anything to say he’d got it. Then a couple of weeks passed and my suspicions were finally confirmed when I was back in the same Irish bar talking to the owner Ronan.

He told me the executive chef had been in a few days before and tried some of his Irish stew - a dish tongue-in-cheekily described in his bar adverts as “the best Irish stew in Cambodia”.

We’d been chatting about the best way to cook it because the price of lamb out here - $47 for a small frozen leg imported from New Zealand - makes it impossible to make. At least at a price the cheapskate losers in Sihanoukville are prepared to shell out for. Goat would have been the next best option, but we couldn’t get hold of that, and when I jokingly suggested dog meat Ronan looked appalled.

“My dog would smell it! He’d never come near me again!” he whimpered.

So I told him to use beef instead, but to throw in a few anchovies to give it a richer flavour. He made the stew with the usual chunks of carrots, potatoes and onions, and then showed me his secret of mashing up a few of the spuds and putting them in a thin layer in the bottom of each bowl, and pouring the stew on top. It was a nice touch and kept the broth high in the bowl while allowing people to thicken the thin liquor to their liking without having to do the mashing themselves.

He told me the executive chef had raved about it in the pub. Ronan began laughing, his arched eyebrows wiggling away.


“‘Oh, he said, that’s a lovely bit of lamb! That's neck fillet isn't it?’ Fucking lamb! And he’s an executive chef! People were listening, so I just played on. What the fuck could I do? ‘I love lamb!’ he says. ‘It’s my favourite fucking meat.’ What the fuck! You couldn’t make that up now could you!”

No wonder the bloke hadn’t replied to my email. It probably wasn’t even his business card. The real executive chef was probably thinking who the hell is this idiot banging on about Rick Stein. I had to get the letter to him myself. The next day, I searched through my contacts list again for the TV cook’s email, and then decided to send a message to his press department, asking them if they would mind passing my letter on to Stein in between dunking digestives.

Surprisingly, I got an email from his PA the next day. She said she had forwarded the letter to Stein. And a week or so later, an email arrived from the celebrity chef, thanking me for my letter and saying: “I've heard a lot about the book and am ordering it.”

I can’t tell you how pleased I am. I’ve always liked the man. I know I rant about celebrity chefs and say they should all be napalmed, but like Fergus Henderson or the late Keith Floyd, who sparked the pandemic of TV cooks, he’s so different from the morons that plague our screens, newspapers, magazines, billboards, government campaigns, and stock cube adverts. He’s got a brain for a start.

Can you imagine Gordon Ramsay, James Martin, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or Gary Rhodes even talking to you unless there was something in it for them, let alone arranging for a stranger and complete novice to do a week in one of their restaurants? And the lesser known TV chefs trying to squeeze their way up the rat cage walls are even worse.

I wonder what Stein will think of my book? I think he comes across pretty well, even if I do mention him in my tirade about celebrity chefs never actually being in the kitchen. I know he’s touchy about the name Padstein too, and there’s plenty on that.

But I’m far harsher on other TV chefs like Heston Blumenthal, who I only saw once in the three weeks I worked at the Fat Duck, and that was just a glimpse of him on the stairs as he took a break from filming in the lab. He didn’t even come down to the prep room to shake our hands and thank us for working for free in his restaurant. I wonder if that nutter in the bar knows him as well?


Book Update:

I want to apologise for the very poor delivery times of the paperback version of my book Down And Out In Padstow And London. For reasons that are beyond me, Amazon have had problems distributing recent batches. It’s something to do with the wrong metadata being input, whatever that means. But Completely Novel who print my book have promised they are trying to sort it out.

I don’t know how long it will continue, but I’ve been told that books ordered through Amazon will arrive soon, and they will obviously not take your money until they do post the book to your address. To help remedy this, an eBay page has been set up to sell my book. So if you want the book in the next few days, then cancel your order at Amazon and buy the book HERE... For the eBook version click HERE...

What’s Next For Gordon Ramsay? Monkey Tennis?

It shows what a ridiculous, self-perpetuating farce reality TV has become when a satirical programme idea dreamed up by Alan Partridge becomes, err, reality.

In I’m Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s failed chat show host frantically tries to sell TV pitches to an unimpressed BBC executive in a bid to get himself back on telly. The gems include Arm Wrestling With Chas & Dave, Inner City Sumo, Cooking In Prison, and Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank.

In flailing desperation, the Norwich DJ plucks another idea of out of thin air, and suggests “Monkey Tennis?” - a phrase that later came to be used by pundits to describe today’s crop of lowest common denominator TV programmes.

But what a shame he didn’t try to pitch his ideas 14 years later. Because in a move worthy of the well-aired tabloid phrase ‘you couldn’t make it up’, Gordon Ramsay has stolen one of Partridge’s gags by fronting a Channel 4 show about cooking in prison.

If you’ve ever wondered whether there is anything that Ramsay wouldn’t do for money, then the answer is a firm ‘no’ after the celebrity chef arrived at HMP Brixton in south London last week to film the new series, which will air in the autumn.

Channel 4 insiders claim it is actually a serious attempt to shake-up prison food and save the Government cash by teaching inmates to cook.

If it all sounds a bit like Jamie's School Dinners, which saw Jamie Oliver overhaul food in schools, then that’s because it is.

With grub in schools, hospitals, and even submarines all having been “transformed” by celebrity chefs, TV executives were clearly left shamelessly scraping the bottom of the barrel by nicking one of Coogan’s ridiculous ideas for a show.

Ramsay is apparently keen to use his cooking skills to help prisoners' rehabilitation - even though he didn’t bother helping out his own brother Ronald when he got banged up in an Indonesian jail in 2007 after being caught with heroin.

The show is part of the £1m, one-year deal Ramsay signed last April with C4. Perhaps if he gets another contract, he’ll get to front Monkey Tennis. It’s not like they’ll be a shortage of celebrity chefs eager to take part.

MORE: Gordon Ramsay A Cut Above The Rest?

My new book on training to be a chef, including stints at Rick Stein's and the Fat Duck, is available on Amazon CLICK HERE

"Reading this book is a serious test for any food writer. Not only has Alex Watts done what all of us say we would like to do, tested his mettle in a professional kitchen, he also writes about his experiences so well that you spend as much time being jealous of his writing skills as you do of his experiences. It's an annoyingly enjoyable read." - Simon Majumdar

Twitter Reviews:

"A rattling good read." - @chrispople

"It's a fab read. The Fat Duck chapters are class." - @Mcmoop

"If you claim to be a foodie you MUST buy this book." - @CorkGourmetGuy

"Bought your book and am hugely enjoying. Funny, engaging, interesting, lively." - @oliverthring

"A great read about the reality of working at The Fat Duck & other less famed restaurants." - @alanbertram

"Very funny, very close to the bone." - @AmeliaHanslow

"A great read and must have book for anyone in the industry." - @philwhite101

"Thoroughly enjoyed it." - @rosechadderton

"Excellent!" - @MissCay

"Just finished your book, and loved it! Thanks for ending on a happy note; it needed it after all the reality ;-)" - @voorschot

"Fab account of psycho chefs, plus work experience with Heston and Stein." - @Laurajanekemp

"Excellent read & loved the ‘scary duck’ tale! I look forward to the follow up book (no pressure ;D). Great memories of first being addressed as chef." - @granthawthorne

"Sensational account of a chef’s life, couldn't put it down. Get it from Amazon now!" - @Fishermansarms

"I'm loving your book. Very enjoyable. Some great one-liners. "His legs wobbled like a crab on stilts" had me chuckling." - @griptonfactor

"Highly recommended. A great book about changing careers for his love of cooking." @Whatsinmymouth

"Downloaded the book last Sunday and finished it the same day! Great read." - @MTomkinsonChef

"Very funny." - @SkyRuth

"Any of you who have flirted with chefdom, go and immediately download this book from Amazon - Down and Out in Padstow and London. Great read." - @el_duder

"Truly brilliant." - @kcassowary

"Just rattled through Down And Out in Padstow and London by Alex Watts in no time at all, what a great book." - @leejamesburns

"It's brilliant, a fine piece of work. If you've ever wanted to peer into a professional kitchen I can't recommend it highly enough." - @acidadam

"Fantastic read - the English Kitchen Confidential!" - @cabbagemechanic

"A great eBook to buy about serving your time (literally!) as a trainee chef." - @OkBayBach

"Great read." - @rankamateur

"Don't start reading it if you have things to do:)" - @NorthernSnippet

"Great book...couldn't put it down, read it non-stop on a train and finished it in one day." - @chunkymunki

"Jolly good read, feel free to do one more." - @esbens

There are also 12 reviews on its Amazon page.

Haven't got a Kindle? You can download a free Kindle reader app to read it on your computer. CLICK HERE.

Masterchef & The Myth Of The Celebrity Chef

(Pic: Celeb Dirty Laundry)

If you want to see how ridiculous the whole celebrity chef phenomenon has become, then look at the mansion Gordon Ramsay has just picked up the keys to in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.

Ramsay has suffered a year of woes in the UK, was forced to close several restaurants in his crumbling empire, and proved that he is one of the world’s worst actors when he appeared in a dreadful flop about a chef who moves to the country and finds love.

But his TV career in the States has gone from strength to strength, with Masterchef returning for a third series and a new show Hotel Hell launching on Fox in March.

And the celebrity chef clearly plans to spend a lot more time there after forking out a staggering £4.3m for the five-bedroom family home, near his friends David and Victoria Beckham.

Four million big ones! It just goes to show the ludicrous gulf between a celebrity chef and someone who actually cooks for a living.

I’ve written a lot about the number of young cooks going into the trade because they can’t be footballers or rock stars, and they think cheffing is the next best thing to be famous in.

A whole generation of ultimately-disappointed hopefuls convinced you can just learn the trade and be the next Ramsay or Jamie Oliver. Programmes like Masterchef do nothing to dispel the myth.

As I wrote in my book...

“The whole show was a farce. The prize was a job as a trainee chef at a top London restaurant. They didn’t say how much you’d get, or what the hours were, or what to do when you’re thrown out on the street because you can’t pay the rent.

“Maybe the prize didn’t exist at all. I mean, who the hell would take them up on it? The whole thing was about getting on the telly, and society’s mushrooming obsession with fame. I couldn’t see any of the contestants swapping their cushy jobs for 16 hours a day of back-breaking toil on a wage just enough to keep them alive. Not if there weren’t any cameras about anyway."

Forget Beverly Hills, it’s more likely to be Butlin’s. If you want the reality, then look at the pay packet of a chef in the UK. A lowly commis chef gets about £13,000, whereas an experienced sous chef trousers as much as £28,000 a year - about the average salary in the trade.

It would take the average chef exactly 204 years to save up enough cash to buy Ramsay’s LA mansion - and that’s assuming he never went out, lived on bread and water, and slept in a cardboard box.

Just remember next time you’re watching Masterchef, cooking doesn’t get tougher than this...

My new book on training to be a chef, including stints at Rick Stein's and the Fat Duck, is available on Amazon CLICK HERE

"Reading this book is a serious test for any food writer. Not only has Alex Watts done what all of us say we would like to do, tested his mettle in a professional kitchen, he also writes about his experiences so well that you spend as much time being jealous of his writing skills as you do of his experiences. It's an annoyingly enjoyable read." - Simon Majumdar

Restaurant Crowned By Gordon Ramsay As Best In Britain Goes Bust

(Pic: Ramsay with Pheasant head chef Jay Scrimshaw, left)

Gordon Ramsay has again confirmed the view that chefs make rubbish food critics after a gastropub he crowned Britain’s best local restaurant went into liquidation.

The Pheasant made it to the final of The F Word three years ago with Ramsay heaping so much praise on the eatery, you’d think he’d just necked a fistful of Prozac and found himself slumped in a trough full of dove-fetched ambrosia.

With his usual wide-arsed bluster straight from the TV producers’ bumper book of overdone-to-the-point-of-cremated sound bites, he ranted and raved over chef-owner Jay Scrimshaw and his trendy nose-to-tail eating.

But his judgement was seriously called into question when restaurant critics then visited the thatched inn in Keyston, Cambridgeshire, and found it more of a turkey than a pheasant.

Far from agreeing with the celebrity chef that it was the best local restaurant in Britain, the Daily Telegraph’s restaurant critic Jasper Gerard questioned whether it was even the best restaurant in the sleepy village of Keyston.

He called the decor “rubbish”, slated the service as appalling, and said the warm salad of confit duck tasted like road kill, and was so chewy he wondered whether they’d instead served up the Dunlop tyre that squashed it.

Of course, the TV exposure proved a big boost for a while, which Jay and his wife Taffeta were quick to seize on, even inviting customers to park their private planes in the next-door farm.

But media fairy dust only lasts for a while, and needs word of mouth rather than word of gobshite to fall back, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the two Rosette pub (pic below) closed its doors this week, blaming the tough economic conditions.

The couple said on their Facebook page: “It is with a heavy heart that Jay and I must tell you that The Pheasant at Keyston Ltd has gone into liquidation.

"We have enjoyed every moment of our six-and-a-half years working here and have tried very hard not to let it go under. But unfortunately, due mainly to the current economic state, this has become harder and harder.”

They said the Pheasant will reopen on January 20 as part of Huntsbridge Ltd, which also owns The Old Bridge at Huntingdon.

The firm’s owner John Hoskins told local paper The Hunts Post: “Jay and Taffeta are a very nice young couple. They did very well in Gordon Ramsay’s competition but unfortunately their business has gone into liquidation.

“It is very sad. It is a tough time to run any business and people will be surprised that this has happened. It was well-known and seemed to be successful.”



But to be fair to the couple, the Pheasant is certainly not the first restaurant lauded by Ramsay in his many TV shows to close, and as long as he remains in the media spotlight, it will be far from the last.

His TV mission to rescue ailing eateries on both sides of the Atlantic is more like the kiss of death than a recipe for survival.

At the time the Pheasant was crowned, half of the 20 restaurants taken on by Ramsay for his Kitchen Nightmares USA show had closed, and a further 12 out of 22 eateries in five series of the UK version had either shut or been sold.

The owners of the Black Pearl seafood shack in New York dubbed Ramsay a "jerk" after it closed, and said they hoped naively they would gain from the nationwide publicity.

"The sad fact is, from the beginning, it was clear that the show was a joke," they added. "From the very first day they were initiated, the changes Gordy Ramsay made were ridiculed by the press, hated by our regular customers and were the direct cause of a 50% drop in revenues. We were never able to recover financially."

The harsh truth is a restaurant needs bums on seats and effective cost control rather than the meddling or endorsement of a celebrity chef to succeed.

And you only have to look at Heston Blumenthal’s failed makeover of Little Chef, which has announced it is to close 61 of its 161 outlets and shed up to 600 staff, to see that in full beam.

No doubt the sacrificed wage slaves now heading to the dole queue will be delighted that the millionaire chef will remain on the payroll as a consultant despite the mass redundancies.

MORE: Gordon Ramsay a cut above the rest?

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Gordon Ramsay Suspends Maze Grill Head Chef For 'Foul-Mouthed Rant At Waiter'

Gordon Ramsay has suspended his head chef at the Maze Grill in London over claims he “went ballistic and screamed obscenities” at a waiter.

Matt Bishop, 34, was told not to return to work at the Mayfair steak house, while Ramsay’s company carries out an investigation, the Sunday Mirror said.

This may seem a trifle hypocritical given Ramsay’s reputation for giving chefs and serving staff the hair-dryer treatment, but apparently he “takes all complaints about any bad behaviour in his kitchens very seriously,” the paper quoted a close source as saying.

Bishop – who said in a recent interview that “cooking is my absolute everything” and even has a mise-en-place prep list tattooed on his body – allegedly ripped into the waiter for taking food to the wrong table.

“The mistake meant the food had gone cold and the chef would have to cook the dish again,” a kitchen insider told the paper. "It’s claimed the chef went ballistic and screamed a string of obscenities at the waiter in front of the whole kitchen.

"The guy was really upset. When Ramsay and his management heard the allegations of what was said, they decided to suspend the chef.”

Bishop (above) is a rising star in Ramsay’s crumbling restaurant empire and spent 18 months working at his Conrad Tokyo eatery in Japan. He returned to work as sous chef at Maze, and became head chef at Maze Grill when it opened three years ago.

Before that, he worked as a commis chef at Marco Pierre White’s Criterion, and later at City Rhodes, Pont de la Tour, Greenhouse, Odettes and Chez Max.

A spokesman for Gordon Ramsay Holdings said: “We do not publicly comment on individual human resources issues.”

Last week, Ramsay put Maze and Maze Grill – in Melbourne, Australia, into liquidation, blaming the crisis on the change in management since the departure of his father-in-law, Christopher Hutcheson, who was axed as chief executive in October last year.

“We have concluded that the business is not sustainable. Unfortunately, this course has become the only option as it is essential to focus on the health of the wider group," a spokesman said.

Can 17-Hour Days Ever Be An Excuse For Violence In The Kitchen?

You probably read the story in the papers this week about head chef Charlie McCubbin (arrowed above) punching a kitchen worker and throwing him down the stairs after food critic AA Gill described his meal as “disgusting”.

McCubbin, 51, chef-owner of the River Café in Glasbury, on the banks of the River Wye, in Wales, escaped with a conditional discharge – the lowest possible sentence – after the court heard he had worked 17-hour days during this year’s Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival and had “snapped” under extraordinary pressure.

Adrian Gill - who was at the festival plugging his new book Blasting Baboons With An Uzi - had apparently made the remark to a waiter in jest, and went on to give the 40-seater establishment four stars out of five for his £25 meal of antipasti, crab tart and lasagne.

But it was too late. The court heard that after the waiter told McCubbin about the drubbing, he kept storming into the kitchen and told cook Keith McVaigh, who was repairing a window: “When you’ve finished that you can f*** off and not come back.”

He then swung a punch at McVaigh, 52, which missed, and pushed him down a short flight of stairs, and then swore at another man, threatening him and saying he would take his "head off", Brecon magistrates were told.

His defence lawyer Bruce Gray pleaded in mitigation that McCubbin had worked himself to the point of exhaustion, and that somehow excused the violence.

But it doesn’t.

I’ve written a lot in the past about chefs working 17 or 18 hours a day, and how these ridiculous working hours should be stopped – if not by the Government, then by the restaurants themselves. And I’m pretty sure if they were, there would be a lot less abuse in the kitchen.

But however hard you work, and however much pressure you’re under to keep up standards, and however bad a review you get (or don’t in the end), it doesn’t justify physical violence and threats to kitchen staff.

Urging magistrates to give the chef the most lenient sentence possible, Gray said: "I say this to give you some idea of the stress of working in an environment where reputation is everything. Mr McCubbin feels he has to check and double check everything.

"The incident that led to this was that a cellar door had been left unsecured all that night and that was the straw that broke the camel's back."

A cellar door being left unsecured! To be fair, I’ve seen and heard of many incidents of chefs flipping over far less – dastardly crimes like clingfilm coming free from the corner of a container, or cooks forgetting to switch off their mobile phones during service.

But as for feeling like he has to check everything that goes out is ludicrous - that’s his job, standing at the pass, scrutinising plates, unless you’re Heston Blumenthal, in which case you’ll have your eye on other dishes.

It’s ridiculous that McCubbin escaped without even a fine or a few hours of community service for taking a swing at an employee and pushing him down the stairs, when a stand-up comic (however bad) gets four weeks in jail for throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch.

I mean, where’s the justice in that? And what sort of message does it send out? There must be hundreds of sadistic chefs rubbing their hands with glee up and down the country, knowing they can mistreat their long-suffering underlings and get off scot free by blaming it on the stresses of work.

“I caught him spying in the oven at his soufflé, your honour...”

Oh well, case closed.

As for Gill pretending he thought the food was awful, and knowing full well the sort of tsunami that would cause in the kitchen, it’s a shame McCubbin didn’t direct his anger at him. Or at least throw him out of the restaurant as Gordon Ramsay, the man he says he’s often compared to for his foul-mouthed histrionics, once did.