To wonder who the F*** watches Great British Menu?

[Twinkie1]

It is the most long running pile of lameness on the TV!

Do they keep it running just to give Jenny Bond a job?

Well they clearly don't run it just to keep jennie bond in a job because er it hasn't been her the last 4 years!

I've watched it since Marcus wareing Jason atherton and co were contestants not just judges!

I look forward to it every year!

I'm going straight into The Hairy Bikers...anyone else?

I love it too. The judge that eats everything then declares he doesn't like it is my favourite. And the chef judges that scare the younger ones. I often go up to DH and say things like "are you happy with the seasoning in that?" and do a chef stare. Yeah...I guess we're weird

Not only do we watch, it, but we record it to watch it once the kids are in bed It's really bad and the dishes are really cliched. Yet another allotment/ savoury afternoon tea/preserves/no waste blah blah. The WI theme is a bit dull. If I hear once more about the WI and their home cooking and how professional chefs who charge £200 a head for their food need to work sooo hard to impress them, well... but I cant stop myself watching it!

It's all a bit silly now, but I do watch.

regenerationfez we record it too. I can't watch it tonight because DH is out .

Last year everything was served in a helmet or a mess tin.

Travelling- I miss the mess tins. But this is the second year we are, er treated to many varying degrees of allotment starter and bunting deserts.

Love it.

See we do watch this, as we quite like the proper chef aspect of it. Seeing all the faffy techniques and food is better than most cooking programmes IMO.

Problem is that it's been several weeks of the WI and I'm kind of sick of it now.

If one more chef makes an inventive 'honey' dessert due to the WI's save the bees campaign, I'll personally go on a bee killing hunt

You can type fuck here, no one gives a fuck when you swear.

I like GBM when shown on Saturday Kitchen as a segment , the whole show that is on a weekend morning is a bit of a yawn.

Is this that one that goes on and on and on and on and on?

The East, the South, the North, the West, the Midlands, the SouthMidlands, the NorthWest, the NorthEast, the WestSouthNorth, the MidSouthNorthEastWest! Christ how many regions?

I do wish they wouldn't show you the finished dish before the chef has actually cooked!! If they fixed that and gave the chef judges a set of judging criteria so they all judged the same way I'd be much happier. Instead they give very vague briefs that each judge and set of chefs interpret in wildly different ways. Grr.

I love it!!!!

And the hideousness of The narrative with 'rising star, Billy Bloggs....' Or 'up and coming chef, Jimmy Sproggett....'

I watched the last 5 minutes bacon jam and some other jam

Watching Hairy Bikers Finnish food is not very appealing even with the HB touch

And gone off Si a little bit him being naked did nothing for me

Great breastfeeding watch - not too long! DH hates it so record and watch next day. Will be doing similar with Strictly - guilty pleasures!

Yes still on regional heats but think we must be close to the end of those, maybe one still to go. It needs to wrap up soon , Masterchef Australia starts again next week!

Oh god it's so dull isn't it? And the voice over woman just sounds so bored and dreary and it's so undynamic...sometimes watch it when I'm ironing though .

I quite liked it initially, but now I find the formula incredibly artificial and irritating. The presentations the chefs use are just ludicrous - boxes, flowerpots, pieces of brick - I just want the judge presenting it to say "Use a fucking round white plate, FGS" and knock marks off for stupidity. And people should also have marks knocked off for scattering edible flowers round to prettify things. Then there's the stuff where contestants have the incredibly stilted conversations with each other about what they're doing and how they really need to get better marks/keep their marks up - it's flaming obvious, why repeat it?

Then there's the judging: the judges always ask questions like "Do you think X has worked?" "Do you think Y is spicy enough?" "Is that cooked enough"? Why? What does it achieve? Then at the end the judge talks through a list of what was good about what a contestant has done, generally in a flat monotone. Then, inevitably, he says "However." Always with that full stop after it. And goes into another monotone rendering of what has gone wrong. I assume they do it because the director tells them to, same as s/he tells them to leave the stupid pause before announcing marks.

I know I sound like I know too much about it, but I haven't been watching the current series. I have however caught part of a couple of programmes and the formula doesn't seem to have changed one iota.

I love it!!

I love it too. One of the contestants for the North West region was so shit I swear I could've scored more points than him

I loved Michael O'Hare from The Man Behind The Curtain. He's just been awarded a Michelin star.

I saw the crazy hair guy with the dish that looked like it was covered in soot!

And there was a woman on it last week whose hair made her look like Gary Oldman in Dracula.

That women's hairstyle was mesmerising squoosh