You’d take his cash but you might not want Duncan Bannatyne over for dinner. He’d probably slate your starter, criticise the loo roll as a false economy then tell you why “Ah’m oot” before dessert is ready.
Cooks to Market (Sky Living, Wednesday 8pm) is effectively Levi Roots: The Series, minus the dreadlocked one. Like those ‘turducken’ multi-bird roasts that seem designed to anger Mother Nature, it cross-bred Dragons’ Den, Come Dine with Me and The Apprentice to produce a strangely compelling hybrid creature, albeit one not yet comfortable in its own skin.
Gizzi Erskine hosted, disguised as a slice of Battenberg, as teams battled to take their home cooking to supermarket shelves. But the outcome was always obvious, which meant most of the tension came from waiting to see if Erskine’s gravity-defying up-do would leave her head completely and enter orbit.
Erskine seemed certain to hit the roof one way or another. Both teams revelled in ignoring her sound advice - to Erskine’s evident displeasure. One team forgot her name, unforgivably.
Gü founder James Averdieck helped the laggards with his business acumen but it was an uneven contest. Dorothy and Yolanda’s Nigerian bean stew wiped the floor with the lasagne peddled by Juliana and Simon, a Hugh F-W lookalike in a Rupert Bear waistcoat.
But the winners’ pitch to the buyers and creatives was naïve, tearful and awkward, like watching someone lose their virginity on TV. The show will be stronger when the foodie ‘dragons’ encounter somebody ready to meet fire with fire.
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