The celebrity chef

• Last Updated: July 03. 2009 3:50PM UAE / July 3. 2009 11:50AM GMT

The grind of the 21st century throws up obstacles at every turn. Nikolaus Oliver is on hand with advice to guide you through. This week: The celebrity chef.

When we considered cheap television programming a couple of weeks ago, we dwelt momentarily on the celebrity chef. What could be cheaper than giving someone a few pots and pans and letting him cook up some drama? One broadcaster devotes a whole page of its website to a sort of rogues’ gallery of people they claim are celebrity chefs – 120 of them. One gets the impression that if you’ve ever owned a frying pan you’re in with a shout in the celebrity chef stakes. At first we all thought the phenomenon was a flash in the pan, but it has turned out to be a recipe for success. It’s meat and drink to the television industry. Let’s boil it down and have a look at its essence.

Celebrity chefs tend to have one character trait that, for the purposes of television, is exaggerated to an almost freakish degree. In this, they’re a bit like the superheroes of the comic books. Superman can fly; Gordon Ramsay swears more than any human being ever has before. Batman dons a bat costume to fight crime; Jamie Oliver dons the persona of a cheerful cockney sparrow to fight fat people who prefer burgers to bruschetta.

It is one of the paradoxes of our modern world that we would rather watch a celebrity chef cooking than cook for ourselves. Another is that the more Oliver and his ilk tell us what “good” food is, the worse our diet seems to get.

So should we understand the phenomenon as a heroic effort to stem the tide of junk food and obesity? Or is the celebrity chef part of the problem? Is there a subtext to celebrity chef culture that is telling us subliminally that you need special gifts and talents, lots of expensive equipment and a television camera pointing at you before you can cook anything more adventurous than a boiled egg?

The more theatrical and bizarre celebrity chefs become and the more they try to persuade us how much fun, how easy, how rustically wholesome and virtuous it is to prepare our own meals, the more attractive it seems just to whack a pizza in the microwave and have done with it. It’s only food, after all. We just want something quick, easy and tasty and to find something interesting to watch on telly – Nigella, perhaps. What a charming lady she is. What marvellous puddings.