Like being given a big kiss by a lemon

MC update:
After being prodded here it is:
Someone rang up just as MC was starting and I try not to be so shallow as to tell them to ring back after I’ve watched some with bald bloke eat a meringue. So I pressed record and then watched it all a bit disjointed, the second half first.

Reading about the original designer of Playmobile Hans Becks who died this week I found out that he had strict rules as to what they could depict in 7.5 cm plastic.

"no horror, no superficial violence, no short-lived trends”

(which could be good advice for all contestants on MC!)

So in honour of that I decided to instigate “the Playmobile Masterchef employment test” i.e. you can only go on Masterchef, if you have a job depicted by a Playmobile figure.

So builders, policewoman, fireman, nurses, famers all ok, sports pr, advertising consultants and publishers probably not. This does mean however that Pirates, Vikings, lion tamers and even the Devil can go on the show hurrah!

Last night they would have passed the test with flying colours as we almost had all the village people. All except that is no member of Lakota Sioux chose to serve up a “fusion” Bison meat Thai curry. We did have a Fireman, a Policeman, the obligatory hapless student and a farmer’s daughter.

Sadly we also had a publisher called Morag, who was obviously more at home ordering in restaurants than cooking in them. Morag fell at the second hurdle partly because the British public won’t march on parliament because the banks have nicked our money but we will burn down number 10 if someone wins Masterchef with the sole intention of turning their ill gotten holiday home into chi-chi B & B serving “Franglais” food!

Last night’s show was surprisingly about food and a rare thing happened I actually fancied one of the dishes. I know this sounds odd but unlike other cookery shows I rarely think watching MC that looks really tasty. But last night “train engineer” Martin (you can definitely get the Playmobile figure of him with a hard hat, a big spanner and an appealing tiny little clip on inspection lamp) made a herb and vegetable soup which just look great really fresh clean and tasty.

Maybe it’s the way they shoot the food or the way Crockett and Tubbs force whole mouthfuls of food in at once. Crockett sorry Gregg seems to get the handle of the spoon to almost touch his forehead as he tucks into another pud, his eyes rolling into his head like a bespectacled Essex shark in a suet frenzy.

But no I often don’t often think “mmm that looks good” partly because after having seen some Kite-surfing web designer sweating into his chocolate fondant it’s not always that appealing.

Down the market: I know it’s the law for all food programmes to film at Borough Market but it is getting a bit dull. Nice place and all that but there must be other markets. I know budgets won’t stretch to a day in Bury buying black pudding but west London must have somewhere that sells the odd conference pear and cerrano ham?

The way it’s going you half expect to see the customers in the background of a shot to be Rick Stein, Jamie and Heston all with camera crew in tow enthusing over the same packet of pigs trotters. I think the only chefs never to film at Borough are “Big Chef little Chef” and that’s only because the snooty types in Neal’s Yard dairy refused to make a picture of a cross channel ferry out of bits of stilton, cheddar and Staffordshire oatcakes!