The Hell of It All Read Online Free PDF Page A

their own spoilt shitbag children’s throats.
    It was then I decided Jamie Oliver was worse than Satan – which wasn’t really fair, since all he’d done was spruce up a school menu or two. He didn’t hypnotise the audience into nodding along in unison. Now he’s back with a pared-down series called Jamie At Home , in which he simply enthuses about food each week for half an hour. It’s endearing. It is. Shut up. It is.
    This week: tomatoes. Jamie walks around his massive garden showing us some tomatoes he’s grown. Try not to notice how massive and posh his garden is, because you’ll want to hit him, and instead focus on the tomatoes. Look! He’s slicing them up into a salad! And it looks bloody delicious. A plateful of juicy homegrown tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and herbs and tiny shards of chilli, with a few blobs of mozzarella beside it, glistening in the sun and …
    Hang on. The credits list no fewer than four ‘food stylists’. One ‘senior food stylist’, three regular ‘food stylists’, and one ‘assistant food stylist’. Which presumably explains why those tomatoes looked so nice. Four people stood around doing that salad’s hair. Somehow, I feel cheated. But mainly bewildered. And a bit scared. I mean ‘food stylist’? What kind of modern hell are we living in here? How do you get into it? Where do you train? Can you get a food styling degree? Do food stylists have their own trade magazine? ‘Strawberry Hat – the Food Stylist’s bible’. As ridiculous career choices go, it’s up there with ‘bee dentist’. This world is doomed.
    Straight after Jamie At Home comes Cook Yourself Thin . Eachweek ‘four cool cooks’ take a flabby prole and teach her to cook slimline versions of her favourite recipes. That’s the idea. It’s flawed. For one thing, the moment the voiceover calls them ‘cool cooks’, you want everyone involved to pack up and go home. What’s more, they’re plainly too plump to be hosting a show called Cook Yourself Thin . One’s got arms like a fat scout’s thighs, for Christ’s sake.
    Worst of all, the cookery’s a swizz. This week, a woman who likes roast beef dinners is told to drop Yorkshire pudding, use chicken not beef, and swap the big, golden, crispy roast spuds for weasly new potatoes in their skins. That’s shit! It’s not the same.
    At the end, having eaten their recipes for six weeks, she’s dropped two dress sizes! Amazing! Unless you pay attention to the large onscreen caption which explains she’s also been ‘encouraged to exercise’, that is. Perhaps, in the new TV spirit of truth and honesty, it should be renamed ‘Cook Completely Different Things and Jog Yourself Thin’ instead. Or maybe just ‘Bullshit’.
    Pfff. This country.
A weatherbeaten Richard Hammond [18 August 2007]
    Hey kids! And by ‘kids’ I mean you, even though you don’t look like a kid any more. Jesus, the ageing process has kicked your arse worse than ebola, hasn’t it? Those jowls are practically down to your elbows. Ergh.
    Anyway, hey kids! Here’s a fun new game for you! Tune in to Bruce Parry’s amazing adventures in Tribe and try to guess precisely how long you’d last in the same environment before suffering a breakdown, clawing at the lens and begging to be taken home to your coffee table and your pillows and your central heating and TV. This week, I managed about 38 seconds, which is an improvement of 20 seconds over the last series. I must be toughening up, like a great big grimacing hard man.
    In case you’re not familiar with the series, here’s how it works: each week, former Royal Marine Bruce Parry – who vaguely resemblesa rugged, more weatherbeaten Richard Hammond – visits a remote tribe in order to experience their way of life. Which might sound a bit worthy and dull until you see exactly what ‘experiencing their way of life’ entails.
    Parry doesn’t stand around aloofly watching the natives and making wry asides to camera: he rolls