Gordon Ramsay’s F Word returns to Channel 4 this autumn with an exciting new mission: the nationwide search for The F Word’s Best Local Restaurant .
The nation’s favourite food show will celebrate the very best of Britain’s independent local restaurants and seek out the highest quality food at affordable prices with the help of nominations from 10,000 restaurant-goers across the country.
Check out the interview with Gordon below:
Michael Perham, the ‘Schoolboy’ of the title, did a remarkable thing; at the age of just 16, he sailed 30,000 miles all by himself. Most 16 year old boys can’t be left in the familiar waters of their own home at 16 without some catastrophe happening.
But while most lads his age are still trying to work out how a washer works – and failing – and can’t get out of bed before the crack of lunchtime, Michael became one of very exclusive group of just 200 people who mastered all the technology and sailing wizardry necessary to go around the world single-handed.
He endured 15 metre waves, winds in excess of 55 knots – not that I know what a ‘knot’ equates to, but I’m guessing it’s pretty windy – and his autopilot conking out with regular monotony. He ended up dealing with it all like a seasoned sea-salt, but there were some tears and panic along the way, and understandably and justifiably so. I suspect if Michael had been cockily over confident, things might not have had such a happy ending. Read more & comment »
Set in an imaginary Britain in which the death penalty has been re-introduced, this feature-length drama confronts viewers with the possible consequences of capital punishment in the UK. The first person to be tried under the new Capital Crimes Against Children legislation is Paul Gadd, aka 1970s glam rock star Gary Glitter.
Ian Hislop explores the compelling and poignant stories of soldiers from across the British Empire during the First World War. Ian meets descendents of soldiers from diverse parts of the Empire: from India, Jamaica, Ireland and Canada. He discovers the soldiers’ reasons for joining up, how they were treated by their comrades and superiors, and how their service affected the Empire and even helped shape emerging national identities. Some were shamefully exploited, some celebrated and honoured, many nearly forgotten. Of all of these Soldiers of Empire , Ian asks whether they should have fought for us, and reveals that, in fact, they were “us”.
Peter Andre is reportedly in talks to take over from Paul O’Grady in Channel 4’s teatime slot next year.
Paul O’Grady is moving back to ITV and The Daily Star reports that Peter Andre has entered “advance talks” with Channel 4, about launching his own chat show in 2010.
So it’s back, and with a new family to gawk it, it all got off to a rather impressive start. I’m unashamedly a fan of fly-on-the-wall; I can’t help myself, though oddly, I do no curtain twitching in my own home. I don’t even know what most of my near neighbours are called, but show me a house full of people I don’t even know being filmed, and I’m there.
This time around, the family we’re spying on are the Grewals, who, judging by first impressions are analogous to the Garnetts in Til Death Us Do Part. There was stubbornness, curmudgeonliness and obstreperous moaning, and that was just from mum and dad Sarbjit and Arvinder. And like Alf and Elsie Garnett, their apparent animosity towards each other belies a deep affection that you might have to dig deep to see, but know is there.
And like Alf Garnett’s daughter Rita, the Grewals are not strangers to having parents disapprove of a choice of partner. For Rita, Alf’s daughter, it was “that lazy scouse git” her dad objected to, but for women in the Grewal family, their marrying a man from a Sikh caste who’s considered “below” them has caused seemingly irrevocable and very sad family divides. Read more & comment »
Spurned by an exasperated Sookie, Bill ends up winning over Adele’s church audience with his vivid recollections from the Civil War, though Andy and Bud remain suspicious. Sam tries to make the most of his opportunity with Sookie, though she’s clearly not ready to commit. Ignoring Tara’s rebuff, Lafayette convinces Jason to give vampire blood, a.k.a. “V juice,” another shot. Alone at home, Bill remembers the painful wartime incident that changed his fate forever.
So Gordon returns for a fifth series of the F Word, and what’s changed? Well, his mission in this series is to find Britain’s best restaurant – and one assumes he’s disqualified due to the potential for self-nepotism, if such a thing exists…
Anywho, last night we met chefs from Leeds and Bristol who had to do the good old telly fave, a cook-off. One of those chefs was Diego De Re, and he was more than a match for Gordon, which made his segments rather entertaining.
It was fun to watch Diego berating Gordon for his dearth of black bristled pastry brushes – so you can easily spot if a few fell out in your ravioli – and the irascible Gordon trying to keep a lid on his famous temper.
The major downside for me on last night’s new series opener was the presence of Katie Price, the world’s most non-biodegradable woman. Granted, she would go to the opening of an envelope, but I felt it devalued the show somewhat that Gordon and Katie felt behoved to resort to seriously unsubtle double entendre concerning breasts, of the chicken and silicone kind… Read more & comment »
“Looking back now, when we and the Germans are great mates, it just seems stupid…”
That one sentence, uttered by a survivor of ‘The Great Escape’ sums up for me the post-war emotion succinctly. It really does all seem such a waste and, yes, stupid. Our men died, their men died, and ultimately, all these years on, it’s hard to imagine that the world could’ve been so radically altered by what boils down to the actions of one mad man.
But history of course often repeats itself and here we are again, the world’s reacting to, and trying to rid us of one mad man. And thousands of lives have been lost as a result. Again.
This terribly moving documentary was about the real-life story behind the classic film, The Great Escape, which – to my shame – I’ve only hazy memories of when it was shown at Christmas. My parents always watched it but I was usually too busy with Lego or some new toy to be overly interested in wartime antics. Read more & comment »
I’m not entirely sure that I came away from this programme with the correct impressions. I’m not even sure that any impression could be correct; maybe it’s all subjective. And by all, I mean not only the content of this programme but the subject it toyed with – that of racism.
And toy with it it did, for while it was billed as an “event” and therefore one expected something rather more conclusive and shocking than the actual result, what the entire thing came down to was a very simple experiment. Too simple in fact.
The result wasn’t a result at all and it all rather petered out to nothing, but that’s not to say it didn’t yield some discoveries, but again, I think calling it an ‘event’ was overreaching. Read more & comment »
Channel 4’s Cutting Edge is of course renowned for bringing to our screens moving, emotive and thought provoking films, but this must be one of the most alternately desperately sad and incredibly inspiring that I’ve ever seen.
Katie Piper’s life changed when she was attacked; sulphuric acid was thrown in her face by way of revenge from a jilted boyfriend. He determined that he would ruin her life, and he tried, but ultimately, he hasn’t succeeded because for as much as Katie’s life is now very different, the surgeon, Mohammad Ali Jawad, who was hailed as a “medical miracle” is helping her piece back together her beautiful face. Read more & comment »
This programme was quite shocking and revelatory for me; shocking because of the hideous surgical procedures we saw and revelatory because it seems no matter what your race, skin colour or genetics, we all want to change ourselves, or at least some part of ourselves.
It’s quite a leveller really to know that the majority of us would change something about ourselves if we could miraculously wish it so, but this film dealt with those who had gone past just hoping they’d wake up one day and look different. Many of the people featured last night had something done about it, such was their unhappiness with themselves.
And though this documentary dealt with the ‘cosmetic’ concerns of primarily ethnic minorities – in this country that is – it certainly did underscore the fact that as a race, we humans always want what we can’t have and few of us are entirely happy with how we look. Read more & comment »
True Blood creator Alan Ball has revealed that we will soon see some more gay characters on the hit vampire TV show.
Ball told The Advocate: “There are a lot of gay characters in the books as you get further and further into them. We’ll be introducing some of those gay characters this new season.”
On other newcomers to the series Ball said:
Another killing in Bon Temps finds Jason back in custody with officers Andy and Bud. Tara gets him off the hook, but neither she nor Lafayette has the antidote to his current ailment. Urged by Gran to use her telepathic abilities to weed out the murderer and exonerate her brother, Sookie persuades Bill to take her to a Shreveport vampire bar called Fangtasia, where she impresses a dominant Nordic bloodsucker named Eric with her prescient powers. Later, Bill demonstrates his own considerable powers when an abusive patrolman stops the couple on their way home.
The TV and movie industry is littered with actors who were tipped to be ‘the next big thing’ only to end up with non-speaking parts in the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme film. Predicting stardom is a precarious business but Alexander Skarsgard has as good a chance as any of making it big. Movie-star good looks? Check. Sensible career choices so far? Check. An engaging and intelligent personality? Check. Family pedigree in the business? Well, his dad is Hollywood star Stellan Skarsgard, so: Check. He’s also recently starred in two of the most critically acclaimed and successful TV series to come out of the US last year, True Blood and Generation Kill.
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