Culch Lent: We Can’t Give Up… Cooking Shows

The worrying thing with admitting to something I am unable to give up is the imbalance it reflects in my psyche. Well there is no greater imbalance in my life than my compulsion to watch cookery shows – and not just cookery shows, but repeats of them. This has spiralled to such an extent that I know the dialogue of some episodes of Nigella Bites and The Naked Chef – these shows have been given the re-run treatment ad nauseum over the years and I have been there to witness it. I cannot begin to think of the shocking quantity of hours spent watching people look for carmelisation on meat, thicken chicken stock and effortlessly feed 40 people without showing them needing to load the dishwasher afterwards. I become engrossed, TV on - it’s immediately to the cookery channels, wincing with disappointment when the +1 option is not working for … There’s more

A Feast of Boys Jumpers

You didn’t know it but yes, that’s what this Christmas’s telly was all about. First we had Toast, the BBC adaptation of the childhood memoirs of the chef Nigel Slater. Lots of 60s nostalgia and lovely food but neither of these could top Nigel’s classic jumpers: Then on the not so jolly front, RTE showed the children’s holocaust film The Boy in the Striped Pygamas. SO not my cup of tea, I don’t know how anyone would put their kid through the ending of this, but it was on in my house and I couldn’t turn away from Bruno’s fantastic pullovers: And finally, from nostalgic drama and mis lit for warped minds to comedy that will have you in tears. Sky ran a series of christmas short films called Little Crackers, in which 6 celebrities narrated and cameoed in films about their childhood christmas. Stephen Fry gets top billing but … There’s more