Remote Control - Saturday 29 June 2013

Do we really need another cooking programme?

Another ego-fest where the cook (note I’ve not used the word chef or celebrity there) almost tries to  convince us that he/she is  rewriting the rulebook.

Yes, we know about  ‘seasonal produce’.

And we would prefer to buy local apples if they didn’t cost twice the price of the zingy new Jazz variety imported from New Zealand – despite local farmers putting up Romanians 12-to-the-caravan and paying them threepence an hour.

This week, Rick Stein’s India (BBC2, Tuesday) spread his fishy niche shakey-hands to the sub continent with predictably dull results.

He wanders round with his elasticband-bound  notebook and exaggerated interest.

For the record, everyone already knows your great epiphany that curry means gravy.

With his false exuberance, and misplaced laughter like the doctor out of the Simpsons, he declared his wife says he is a fish.

I reckon he misheard her – I think she said he had the personality of a fish.

Maybe he should stick to endless recipes involving sauteeing fish in lemon and butter over an Aga.

No, if I really want  seafood tips I’ll turn to  Oldboy, the Korean thriller.

The listings this week contained the warning that the adults only revenge oddity containing “scenes of violence/torture/sex/live octopus ingestion”.

That’s right. Eating octopuses that are still alive. None of your poncy  fillet frying or popping still-conscious crustaceans into pots of water.

Elsewhere, 10 minutes of pure delight in ITV4’s World of Sport: Crazy Racing Sunday, 7pm).

Caravan Racing from Ispwich in 1980 and Bus Racing from Northampton in 1982.

The first was won by a loon called Basho and the second included overtaking (take note F1) in former London Transport double deckers.

They even had pot holes on the track, no doubt to match the capital’s streets in the days of Thatcher’s austerity cuts. Utter madness in front of massed crowds.

Might have been the fact that telly was just three channels in those days, but we’re talking thousands of paying punters parting with hard cash to watch the shells of mobile homes being shorn across the track.

And given the likes of UK Gold and Dave have a  reduced pool of programmes thanks to a string of sex  cases, maybe the sports  archives are the way  forward. After all, there’s no chance of a Routemaster being arrested on historical child abuse charges.

Alan burrows