Child Two and I recently watched Jamie Oliver’s American Food Revolution and I don’t mind admitting I blubbed when he bounced into a class of five and six year olds, held up a tomato, and literally NOT ONE child knew what on earth it was. They couldn’t even identify a potato in its natural state, though they apparently spent their lives wolfing them down once they’d been deep fried. The town he chose to launch his revolution in had topped official US charts as the unhealthiest place in America. In the funeral home, the undertakers explained they couldn’t even cremate their largest clients – their body fat meant they burnt away in the ovens like giant candles. Needless to say Jamie worked very hard, introduced good food to the schools in the face of massive resistance, and has probably increased the life expectancy of people in that town by about 20 years each.
It was extraordinary stuff and it’s made me a huge Jamie fan. I recently bought his new 30 minute book and, while everything takes me a lot longer than 30 minutes to make, it is great and everything so far has been eaten by everyone, no mean feat in a household where tastes differ to almost (entirely) wilful degrees.
So all that meant that when a nice PR from the Sun’s Buzz magazine got in touch and offered me the new Jamie At Home series as a giveaway for one lovely reader, I said yes please. I find the Sun a very bizarre paper – I was stunned recently to find it still features naked women on Page 3. In 2011!! With no sense of irony. Isn’t that just peculiar? Aren’t men embarrassed to be seen with something so tawdry and yeeshish? It seems not, as the Sun’s circulation is stratospheric. How would they feel if the Page 3 was not some poor cold teenage girl trying to escape from shelf-stacking any which way she can, but an equally bored teenage boy with his bits out, accompanied by some ghastly caption ending up with ….’and we think he’s got a BIG future ahead of him,’ or something equally cringeworthy?
But I digress. The DVD giveaway is in fact associated with the Sun’s telly listings magazine, The Sun Buzz Magazine, which does feature a lot of celeb cleavage shots – which mag doesn’t these days – but at least these are famous(ish) people who’ve worn low-cut tops and hung out of them on purpose, not poor exploited girls who know no better. So I’m happy to mention it in the interests of giving one of you lovely people a set of the six Jamie At Home DVDs. Sadly they don’t come in a swanky box but they still feature his cheeky chops on the sleeves. If you’d like to win the set, leave a comment and I’ll pick the winner from my chef’s hat in about a week. Bonne chance and bon appetit!