I have seen a couple of episodes now of Marco Pierre White’s Great British feast and have watched with amazement as this ostentatious, shaved ape in tweed throws his greater that average weight around whilst smoking endless cigarettes and shooting fluffy cute things for laughs. If I didn’t know he was a chef, I would never have guessed. His rough alcoholic nobility meets neanderthal man look belies his three michelin star talents, but enough of his unsavoury looks, at least he has a winning personality!
The premiss of the show is to test different recipes on the general public in his Berkshire restaurant to come up with the ultimate great British feast. The public eat a selection of dishes for each course and record their thoughts on a form. At the end of the meal Marco’s long suffering Maitre d’ goes through the various comments as Marco scoffs and sneers that the public don’t know what they are talking about and then promptly strops off in a childish huff in his ridiculously extravagant chauffeur driven Range Rover. He also annoys me because I have to spend time coming up with a polite insult to describe him when there are so many swear words that would do just that.
His chauffeur, Mr Ishii, is a quiet Japanese gentleman who has to put up with his purple fits of rage on a fairly frequent basis but as Marco and his faithful servant stood together on the river bank whilst Marco dangled his rod gently into the water their relationship reminded me of scenes of Ted and Ralph from the fast show! He not only seems to make the men around him uncomfortable but his greasy ‘awwwright me bootifuw daaarlin’ approach to anything female makes me and most certainly them want to rush to the nearest facility with running water and scrub with wire wool and extra strong bleach. More importantly his unwashed slimy appearance would most certainly put me off his food. I would no more eat his food than I would plate of slugs.
Even though he irritates me greatly, it does really make me laugh when he tries to interact with the lower classes. He made a trip to the local supermarket to see what the little people get up to. I’m not sure what he expected to find. I had visions of him asking the staff to direct him to the isle with the Gulls eggs, which incidentally was one of the courses. He seemed about as comfortable as you would expect the Queen and Prince Philip to be, strolling up and down the isles.
“BOGOF! Pheelippe!, no not those ones the Bird’s Eye Fish Fingers, they’re two for one!”
He was also picking leaves off potted herbs and eating them and then putting his mucky paws all over everything on the fish counter.
Next week is the final showdown, the ‘world of puddings’ as he so eloquently puts it, so I will greatly look forward to that.
