To agree with jamie oliver's principles, but still think he's a twat

[molyholy]

I agree with his campaigns, but he is an absolute dickhead. Really unlikeable.

I think he has forgotten (or maybe never knew) what its like to be an ordinary mortal cooking for a family with resource to bog standard food.

We always laugh when he starts with the ...oh just a handfull of x y and z herb. I always have to say "well thats a tenners worth right away...and has he seen the size of a packet of supermarket herbs. I do grow some of my own but his handfull would wipe out my plant for a month.

And dont get me started on his meat wrapped in waxed paper --though I suspect that maybe done for the cameras

He is so out of touch with what the average person can spend on a meal

Completely agree, oldraver. I hate the way he throws food in the air and serves everything up on an old tin tray. I couldn't replicate that in my 8ft square kitchen if my life depended on it. I do like some of recipes though, just not the JO personality.

It bothers me that someone who came from quite a wealthy and privileged background to start with seems to think that they know how to reform the poor.

His recipes that take 'only 30 minutes' take more like an hour for anyone who isn't a trained chef with all the ingredients and equipment already prepped and laid out. That's a pretty long time when the kids are hungry and you've been working all day.

People have also mentioned that his prices are totally unrealistic.

And as one of the youngest uber-wealthy people in the world (wasn't he the world's youngest billionaire?) he has done a very nice job of increasing his millions from telling other people what to do with their money.

He does give small amounts of money to promote healthy eating and support a few young people to learn about cooking, but compared to the millions he makes it's just a drop in the ocean.

It really annoyed me when he kept claiming that he'd funded the start of the food college for youngsters out of his own money without Jules knowing. there was so much wrong with that attitude (and his company, not his own money were funding the project, which made back millions btw). He also turned up at the hospital for the birth of one of his kids with a TV crew, then claimed that Jules didn't know the cameras were there. I didn't believe a word of it. It's all a horribly strung together media farce which increases his wealth and doesn't really help out people who need it.

Donating 20 million or so to a well-run established charity would achieve far more, but wouldn't give him publicity and profit, so it doesn't happen.

His tips policy towards his staff is highly exploitative.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/30/jamie-olivers-italian-restaurant-chain-under-fire-over-tipping-policy

Donating 20 million or so to a well-run established charity would achieve far more, but wouldn't give him publicity and profit, so it doesn't happen.

I'm not sure about that. The publicity people like Bill Gates get from their charitable work seems to work pretty well in their favour.

His sugar crusade makes me laugh..what about salt? His recipes are full of it. Google his 15 minute pasta puttanesca. You would get a heart attack if you followed it to the letter. i did the first time I made it and it was inedible. I subsequently made it with half the anchovies and cut out the capers and anchovy oil, didn't add salt to the boiling pasta and replaced fresh olives with his briney ones. It was much better then but his version was just nasty.

As for him, I think his heart is in the right place but he's got no sense of his own limitations and believes himself to be an awful lot more important than he actually is.

Surely there must be photos of those parents somewhere, even posted by the parents themselves? I googled but couldn't find any.

Why on earth would you take a picture of yourself delivering food to your children at school? Even if for some bizarre reason they had, why would they post it on the net?

BillSykesDog

I have always thought there had to be more to burgers-through-gate than the tabloids said. Now I know.

Incompetent git.

I liked his very first series where he was sliding down the bannister in his flat and beinq quite fun.

His heart is in the right place but he's extremely heavy handed in his hobby horse passions.

I do like his recipe books though, the "everyone can cook honest" (not actual title) got me in to cooking when I was a student. They're easy to follow and not that expensive at all, in the main. Although the budget book does make you look at what you consider a normal portion size to be!

I think he should mind his own business and let people make their own informed choices not keep fucking ramming it down their throat

I think his views and vision of poverty is very different to the reality and that can be damaging as people listen to, and like him! He also seems to ignore why people are in poverty, and why they behave the way they do with his patronising attitudes.

I don't dislike him per se, I find him very irritating to watch but do like his campaigns with regards school food etc.

And yeah, what kickassangel said.

Suburban I took this comment of yours on the assertion of a poster who lives locally and said that people had passed healthy food to their hungry children through the school fence because of balls up of the lunchtime arrangements as meaning it did not happen.

Surely there must be photos of those parents somewhere, even posted by the parents themselves? I googled but couldn't find any.

Obviously I misunderstood you.

Did you mean that you agree that it may have happened just like the poster said but you just couldn't find the images?

After all, not everyone takes photos of things and posts them on the internet.

Not unless they have the perspicacity of a slick TV company.

I watched the programme and I'm sure I remember the cameras recording the woman posting takeaway food through the fence. So they wouldn't need the "perspicacity of a slick TV company" because there was already one there

I did find an old BBC news article where the mum who took the orders said there were also orders for jacket potatoes and salad sandwiches. There was an accompanying photo of two camping boxes full of takeaway food and fizzy drinks, but all the food was wrapped up so you couldn't see what had been ordered.

Limited what I meant was that there were no photos of healthier options being posted through the fence, not that the food posting didn't happen at all. The mum who took the orders for the food gave interviews to the press so she must have been reasonably media savvy. I'm surprised she didn't say something to the camera people when the food was being handed over so she could show that not all the students had ordered burgers or fish and chips.

I'm very interested in the point about photography and recording in places where people would normally expect privacy because it's my job.

You can't do it unless the person who owns the premises gives permission.

You would also get everyone to sign a release form - though if you were a lowly person, like say, I dunno, a 20 year old sous chef at his first job chopping vegetables at a starry restaurant like er, The River Cafe - I can't really see you arguing with your bosses who badly wanted to have the free advertising of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about New Labour's and the BBC elite's staff canteen.

Jamie Oliver became a star because of that programme. He shone on it. It's not too much to say that he wouldn't be where he is today without it. That says as much about his media dexterity than his cooking ability. Maybe more. And that's fine.

But if it had made him the butt of the jokes and the makers had gone on to give interviews mocking him; if he'd complained that he was unfairly treated and coerced onto camera, would any fan of heavily edited fly-on-the-wall documentaries have any sympathy with an unknown chunky, blabber-mouthed sous chef?

Would Jamie Oliver?

I once read that he has his people sit around planning on how to get him a Knighthood, probably bollocks but makes me laugh.

It's the same as when HFW had a go at a woman for not buying happy chickens. She kept saying she would if she had the money but she didnt. He just kept trying to make her feel guilty, and just had no concept of someone not actually being able to afford it. Twat.

Where does the truth lie when a TV production company has a contract to deliver an attention-grabbing programme but it's all looking a bit dull and earnest with lectures about healthy eating?

Do you think it might be possible that a desperate producer might rev up a group of bored and naive people by saying: 'Here's some burgers from the van, girls. Post them to your kids though the fence. Stick it to the mockney bastard. Who does he think he is, coming here, telling you what to do and that you're no good and he knows best? Bloody cheek. Go on. It'll be a laugh.'

I have no idea whether this happened on this occasion and for all I know the standards of compliance were unimpeachable.

But I have been in that situation and I have to confess, it would have crossed my mind.

There is no one so media savvy as someone who works in the media.

Here's some burgers from the van, girls. Post them to your kids though the fence. Stick it to the mockney bastard.

Tbh I'm quite naive about this sort of thing - it would never occur to me that this might have happened, but if course it could have. But surely the mum who took the orders would have told the BBC what really happened and not made up some story? If she'd been stitched up by the programme's producers why didn't she say that's what had happened, rather than saying the students asked their parents to buy the food and pass it through the fence?

I hate his, look at me I'm cooking a curry in a field! Yeah because we all do that.

I have no idea. For all I know she fed her children crappy food, It's likely. I don't, but plenty of people do.

It's also likely that reporters, even those from the BBC, chose to interview a mouthy idiot rather than someone trying to explain about the logistical problems of lunchtime at the school but that was a bit complicated and boring. I would.

I remember a local poster trying to make that point - I think it was billsykesdogs - and I'm not trying to score any points, but when she said that, it rang a bell.

If that was true at that school I'd rather the head sorted that out rather than calling in Jamie Oliver's TV crew. I'd be really angry at that and I think most parents would and should.

If Jamie Oliver was so exercised about this matter why didn't he take cameras into his own children's school? Maybe the school is exemplary, but if so, surely he could use it as a contrast? Or was there some reason why he couldn't or didn't want to?

I'm not really arguing with you suburban, though it probably looks that way .

I agree with Jamie Oliver's core point about obesity. I just don't think he makes it in the best way or is the best person to make it for the reasons I've given. But that's my opinion.

His wonky veg crusade is good. Suppose it doesn't matter what he's like if it stops waste and the farmers benefit.

His friend, that Jimmy fellow, has me and DH in stitches for all the wrong reasons with his 'home-made' twattery. We sit there adding up the £££s it takes him to make one piece of mozzarrela or sourdough with his contraptions to save money at the supermarket. A £20 cafetiere, muslin, cakerack and ingredients FOR ONE PIECE OF CHEESE. Now that's the bubble they live in.

If you want to get rid of Mr Oliver, you could just buy up all the Fennel stock, swear he couldn't do a menu without it. I like his wife though, she comes across nice.

I had no real opinion of him until the "Oh so funny" story of him rubbing a hot pepper over an apple for his child when she had displeased him so she couldn't eat it. Deliberately making a child's food inedible is abuse. Maybe I should admire his honesty that he admitted to this appalling behaviour but it wasn't said in an "oh God I feel terrible about this" way, it was said in a "What am I like hur hur hur" way. He makes me shudder now.