The Naked Chef and the Master’s Apprentices

Abstract

We confess to having differing, and changing, attachments to Jamie Oliver the celebrity chef — sufficient to provoke us to watch or be aware of his presence on the programming schedules of various TV stations in the city where we live. However, as the LifeofBob blog indicates, this is an attachment that is not shared by everyone — celebrity attachments are not universal and a backlash (overexposure) can dim a celebrity’s appeal quickly. Oliver first came to our notice in Australia through his series The Naked Chef (renamed Oliver’s Twist in America). In this series the then young, boisterous, boyishly handsome, foodaphile jumped around the set (not accidentally in his own kitchen) at frenetic speed, talked to someone off-camera, lisped and pranced around, pulled earnest faces, introduced us to a vast array of mates, and seemingly threw together food that looked great and we could imagine tasted great as well. For one of us this interest was/is an extension of a long-held passion for the art of food as produced by a range of media for our consumption — both metaphorically and literally.

‘I’ve got two questions …’ Roger said. We were watching the telly together in his house. There was nothing else to do. ‘Firstly, why the fuck is Jamie Oliver on my fucking telly screen? And secondly, why is it that whenever that little … shit … rears his ugly head, the bastard remote control disappears?’ He always got like this when he saw celebrity chefs.

(Lifeofbob weblog, 2007)