Festive Spittery

What are you doing for Christmas? Are you going over to Jamie Oliver's? Of course you are! In fact, we ALL are. Invited that is. However I imagine the reception we would receive if we were to turn would be remarkably different to that implied by the trailer (for new series 'Jamie's Family Christmas'). Rather than curled up by his fireplace thrashing his Nan at Monopoly, we'd be sat at home watching the Queen's speech on haemorrhoid cushions having been violently rimmed by his fat-tongued dobermans.

The series looks like standard Oliver fayre so fingers crossed it barely grazes my eyeballs. One difference is that this time he genuinely seems to know the people he's cooking for. They are his family after all. Previous instances of his Naked Cheffery generally involve the camera crew loitering around his kitchen until his wife calls him to say she's bringing some chardonnayed-up friends over, and could he rustle something up. "Yeth of courth I will thweetheart" he blurts and away he goes. They then 'arrive' and we enjoy some clumsy ad-libbing where he asks how their night was. Their mouths say "it was lovely" but their eyes say 'I'm sorry? My agent said I just needed to walk through the door, eat the food and not laugh at your face. I wasn't expecting to be one of Paul Merton's Improv. Chums'.

I admit I can't deny his success, he has cornered an entire area of the culinary market so I applaud him for that. Personally I always preferred herbs finely chopped rather than pulled apart by sausage fingers and emptied on top of my dinner like the contents of a flymo basket, but what do I know? Actually, since you ask, I know that the likelihood of my Christmas dinner not having a spittle glaze is significantly better than at the Oliver house.

'My wife is the biggest gravy fan in the world' his face flaps at us. Words escaping his lips like someone strugging through a carwash, fricatives misting the camera lens like a greenhouse in Autumn. Well yes Jamie, we know. She hopped on that train sixteen years ago. Didn't you notice? To quote Nick Griffin, "it was in all the papers".