Cooking With Ramsay - A real Kitchen Nighmare

I like Gordon Ramsay's TV shows. I set Sky + to record his excellent Kitchen Nightmare's program whenever it is on. Not only do I like him for his cooking, but also because is keen to tell people exactly what he thinks about their food, their effort and their attitude. So in fairness to Gordon, I'll be blunt about his program from last Friday night called "Cooking With Ramsay". it was truly shite.

I understand that he wanted to have people able to cook along with him so his menu had to be fairly uncomplicated. However, his choice of menu was shocking. Steak and chips is, I believe, not the most axing thing to do and as for chocolate mousse, they teach that in home economics (sorry, Food Technology) at High School.

The fact that Gordon Ramsay chose a first course that could not be prepared in advance also meant that as a meal that you can cook for guests, it is a complete waste of time because the host of the dinner would never be out of the kitchen.

Okay, so the menu choice was not good, but what about the show itself ? It has to be said Chirs Moyles was a poor choice of guest chef. Moyles believed himself to be the funniest "oaf" in the kitchen, and acted like a prat for most of the show. Speaking to my parents today about the show, my father said he wanted to turn over just because of Moyles pathetic behaviour. nice choice Gordon.

What made the studio worse was that there appeared to be people standing around the kitchen, for no reasons at all, and the director kept feeling obliged to zoom in on them for no apparent reason every 21 second. I am specific about the timing because the person in charge of choosing which camera angles to use appeared to have some sort of fit as the camera angle changed approximately every three seconds. A close up of Gordon, cut to the dinner guests, cut to a Moyles doing something, close up of Gordon, close up of Gordon preparing the food, close up of this from another angle, close up of people standing around, and then repeat the whole process again. If Ramsay's target audience was 13 year old, then the 3 second cuts might have made sense. but as it was, they just made the show look disjointed.

Then to make matters worse, they had web cams showing people from around the country doing the cooking too along with him. Web cams are never the best medium to use on TV at the best of times. The lip sync never works and they just look a mess. But the deliberate choice of a naturist, fully in the nude showed just what a mess of an idea the show was. Gordon Ramsay's prepared lines about breasts "chortle chortle" and warnings not to singe your minge "hilarious", seemed to lower the value of the show even further.

All these factors coupled with the fact that anyone recording the show on a hard drive recorder (like my parents did) would have lost the end of the show because even Gordon Ramsay failed to cook his three course in less than an hour, meaning the show over ran, would have left anyone in no doubt that Gordon Ramsay could have cone much, much better than this.

To be honest, the concept was a good one, but its delivery was awful.