Chefs and limelight are a recipe for trouble!
Wednesday 28 August 2013
EGO – three little letters for a very powerful word that can destroy people and their families. Other ways we have of describing misplaced supersized ego is 'losing the plot', 'believing one's own publicity', 'carried away with themselves' or (a favourite one of my late aunt), 'Put a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to hell' – and we saw a fair bit of that during the Celtic Tiger.
Foodies and celebrity chefs are never off our TV screens these days, either cooking, demonstrating or hosting the dozens of fly-on-the-wall competitive TV shows. From MasterChef to Rick Stein, Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, The Great British Bake Off and Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, we have an insatiable appetite for cookery shows, be they from home or abroad.
In the old days, a boy or girl might have left school early and gone into catering college to train as a chef, worked through their career steadily, building up a great clientele by providing excellent food, but without anyone ever really hearing of them.
Nowadays, it seems no chef wants to do anything as mundane as that – too many seem to want not only huge salaries, but also their names in lights and their egos massaged, or they will flounce off to a different restaurant, clutching their cleavers.
The problem with fame and celebrity across the board, from The X Factor to cookery shows, is that some people don't know how to handle the fame when they get it.
Everybody keeps telling them how talented and wonderful they are and the ego kicks in big time. It's a bit like the young football players plucked from obscurity into the limelight.
A couple of weeks ago I received a rather nice invitation to attend a special gourmet dinner at the plush Wood Norton Hotel based in Evesham, Worcestershire. www.thewoodnorton.com
The main attraction of this "fantastic foodie event" was that it was to be an evening of 'Dinner with Gregg Wallace', co presenter of the BBC's MasterChef; and, as a further enticement to attend, I was promised a seat at the main table with Gregg Wallace and the hotel owner during the event!
Now, my interest was not really in Wallace, whom I regard as a rather uncouth bombastic man whose eating habits on MasterChef regularly set Twitter alive and are enough to turn me off altogether. In fact, I cannot understand how Wallace, and other people eating on live television are not instructed by the production companies involved as to the social graces of simple table manners –such as holding their knives and forks properly – before they are let loose on the general public. But then perhaps those making the programmes don't know any better either.
My interest in attending the event was that the Wood Norton Hotel is strategically located in the Cotswolds near Cheltenham and is also a perfect stopover if driving to London, completely accessible from both Holyhead and Pembroke in Wales. During the Second World War, the Wood Norton was used as an emergency broadcasting base and monitoring service and subsequently a BBC training centre. In any event, it seems I missed a challenging evening, culminating with a shocking display of Wallace's manners, or lack of them.
The night ended with him punching and subsequently rolling around the floor with a fellow diner, who had allegedly 'touched up his girlfriend'.
Wallace, who made a lot of money with his vegetable business, has become extraordinarily successful mouthing out his opinions on contestants' food, which in the early days he seemed to know very little about.
Here in Ireland, I watched the final episode of RTE's Celebrity MasterChef which was, after a couple of good earlier series, in my opinion, 'Town Hall' stuff with neither real 'celebrities' nor 'master cheffing'. Indeed, I felt sorry for the contestants in the heel of the reel who ploughed on gamely.
Both judges, Nick Munier and Dylan McGrath, came across as lacking spark and seemed totally wrung out. Draped across armchairs, they went through mock 'elimination' conversations, tossing out soundbites such as "nicely balanced menu" and "refresh my memory". Hello! That's what you were there for, to know what was going on.
English-born former waiter and now Dublin restaurant owner Nick Munier had made his name originally by appearing as maitre d' on Hell's Kitchen. In May, it was reported he admitted that his lust for the limelight caused the breakdown of his marriage to the lovely Denise McBrien.
He was reported as saying his constant need for validation from the media damaged his relationship, saying "I love the limelight, I find it so alluring. The creative side of me wants validation of what I do, public affirmation. I love being adored and I jumped at the chance to be on TV.
"It was like being on stage; I loved everything about being recognised everywhere. I let it go too far. I can be excitable like that. I am a weak man for a bit of attention and a bit of flattery. It can do a lot for your confidence if you didn't have any confidence before. But it's not real. I don't get out often at all, but when I do, I really like to party."
Happily, it was also reported recently that he and Denise are working things out after counselling.
And so we move on to Paul Hollywood – the one who stands up with the ever-fragrant Mary Berry on BBC2's The Great British Bake Off.
Poor woman, what must she make of it all as the bearded Hollywood burned his muffins, upset the apple tart and was kicked out by his wife of 15 years, Alexandra.
It was alleged he'd had an affair with Mexican pastry chef Marcela Valladolid, his co-star on the US version of the show which was axed after the first series. He, too, is bleating about the perils of fame and reported as saying he believed he might have been happier if he'd never become famous in the first place.
He was quoted as saying his newfound stardom had "caused a problem". The Liverpudlian Hollywood apparently bemoaned "I'm an old man from the rough end of town – I lost my youth because I started baking with my dad at 17 and had to get up and go to bed early."
While his souffle may have drooped Stateside, in the UK, The Great British Bake Off is facing now into its fourth series. Hollywood needs to remember he is not George Clooney, he needs to just keep baking his baguettes!
In this new world of reality TV, activities we would have considered mundane in the past have been explored, expanded and elaborated upon by a whole host of celebrities of an entirely different breed than we were used to. Here we have middle-aged, conceited men struggling with their somewhat unexpected celebrity and responding by acting like idiotic teenagers.
First Published in The Sunday Independent on 25th August, 2013.