Things you never hear on Masterchef (BBC1, passim). The presenters: ‘Cooking doesn’t get more basic than this.’ The competitors: ‘Winning Masterchef would, frankly, make little difference to my already satisfactory life.’ And the chef in the restaurant kitchen where the contestants have to make lunch: ‘We’ve got very few people in today, so you lot can take it easy.’
What with Masterchef, Come Dine With Me and now Michael Winner’s Dining Stars (ITV1, Friday) it seems that sooner or later every amateur cook in the country is going to be rated. Nobody will just invite friends for supper any more. ‘Hi! Wonder if you’re free on Saturday to come round and award us points. It’ll be very simple — just you, us and a camera crew.’
Michael Winner’s new programme is weird. As the husband of one of his contestants said, hoping he’d enjoyed a dish, ‘I don’t think he looked too distasteful when he was eating it.’ Wrong! Though if you think Winner looks a bit naff, you should see the furnishings in his bedroom. A photographer from Hello! magazine would run away gibbering.
The format is this. Michael goes by helicopter and Rolls to visit an amateur cook in their home. He arrives in town early, which gives him a chance to go to a local professional eaterie and say how dreadful the food is. Then he phones that evening’s victim to ask the menu, carp about it, and remind them how high his standards are. There is a taking-the-mickey histrionic voiceover, overwrought music, and a tedious running gag in which he yells at his assistant.
At the house he is reasonably courteous, but at the end of the meal he retreats into another room to dictate his impressions into a voice recorder. The first hostess had two very sick children and served a soggy, tepid beef Wellington.
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