Some folk just don't have the gift of the gab, do they, as Gordon 'gift of the gaffe' Brown demonstrated yet again with his mean-spirited "she's just a sort of bigoted woman" dismissal of poor everybigot Gillian Duffy.
If only he wasn't such a misanthrope and could channel the joie de vivre of Olly Smith, the Boris Johnson-esque buffoon fronting the UK version of Iron Chef (Monday 26 to Friday 30 April, 5pm, Channel 4). Now there's a man to inspire the good people of Rochdale.
"Running in, I'm like a Spitfire coming through the clouds," he bellowed ebulliently as he swooped on the contestants to check their progress. You couldn't get more British bulldog! And there was plenty more where that came from.
Having loved the US version of the cult Japanese show and heard the UK version was being presented by he who delivers the hilariously OTT wine reviews on The Saturday Kitchen (the memory of him blowing an imaginary trumpet at the end of one is indelibly etched in the memory), I was looking forward to it massively.
And despite a few rough edges, I wasn't disappointed. For those unfamiliar with the format, it's basically a martial arts riff on the conventional cook-off. The chairman, a suave-looking Japanese dude, selects one of four Iron Chefs (on Monday, Martin Blunos) to take on four contenders in the grand- sounding Kitchen Stadium.
Using the day's special ingredient, beef (cue lots of crazy camera shots of ribs of beef cutting away to the mock-surprised face of the chairman), the contenders had to prepare a dish each to the Iron Chef's four, their progress monitored by Smith and cheffy sidekick Nick Nairn before their final dishes were assessed by two guest judges (one, our very own Joanna Blythman).
Sounds chaotic? It was. Especially with Smith running around like a loon urging Nairn to "speak to me in beef" and declaring that watching Iron Chef Blunos was "like watching an ox cut up an ox... beeftastic".
Blunos just nicked it, beating the contenders by half a point. "Taking quality cattle, rolling it into a ball and throwing it at the world" is a winning tactic, it seems.
Beeftastic all round!
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If only he wasn't such a misanthrope and could channel the joie de vivre of Olly Smith, the Boris Johnson-esque buffoon fronting the UK version of Iron Chef (Monday 26 to Friday 30 April, 5pm, Channel 4). Now there's a man to inspire the good people of Rochdale.
"Running in, I'm like a Spitfire coming through the clouds," he bellowed ebulliently as he swooped on the contestants to check their progress. You couldn't get more British bulldog! And there was plenty more where that came from.
Having loved the US version of the cult Japanese show and heard the UK version was being presented by he who delivers the hilariously OTT wine reviews on The Saturday Kitchen (the memory of him blowing an imaginary trumpet at the end of one is indelibly etched in the memory), I was looking forward to it massively.
And despite a few rough edges, I wasn't disappointed. For those unfamiliar with the format, it's basically a martial arts riff on the conventional cook-off. The chairman, a suave-looking Japanese dude, selects one of four Iron Chefs (on Monday, Martin Blunos) to take on four contenders in the grand- sounding Kitchen Stadium.
Using the day's special ingredient, beef (cue lots of crazy camera shots of ribs of beef cutting away to the mock-surprised face of the chairman), the contenders had to prepare a dish each to the Iron Chef's four, their progress monitored by Smith and cheffy sidekick Nick Nairn before their final dishes were assessed by two guest judges (one, our very own Joanna Blythman).
Sounds chaotic? It was. Especially with Smith running around like a loon urging Nairn to "speak to me in beef" and declaring that watching Iron Chef Blunos was "like watching an ox cut up an ox... beeftastic".
Blunos just nicked it, beating the contenders by half a point. "Taking quality cattle, rolling it into a ball and throwing it at the world" is a winning tactic, it seems.
Beeftastic all round!
More from this column
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