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Tasty British Exports?

I knew Gordon Ramsay had branched into US TV stardom with Hell’s Kitchen but I didn’t expect him to turn up on the second hour of US TV cookery primetime as main presenter of the American version of Masterchef –– all on Fox TV.

It was the semi-final last night and the contestants were sweating over their lemon meringue pies — I wonder whether it’s actually possible to send up this TV genre.

Somewhat serendipitously Masterchef  had imported its floppy-haired, bearded, Johnny Depp-spectacled French judge — someone who I’d watched this time last year and blogged about when the programme was on when we were staying in Brittany. In its hyped-up introduction, the US show claimed that Masterchef is a TV phenomenon all over the world — India and Israel were mentioned.

What did seem telling was the contestants seemed much more openly competitive than those in the UK original, who almost seem embarrassed to get through. In the US version, they slag each other off like Apprentice contestants (who only seem to do that when goaded for pre-publicity — in the tasks the British Apprentice contestants are remarkably nice to each other).

Or perhaps Americans are just more honest — a big difference perhaps between British and US writing? I always think American writing is more direct — much more emphasis on active and imaginative verbs (as Stephen King would recommend) whereas British writing is typically more discursive. This doesn’t mean good British-style writing is bad — just different — compare the styles of Time and The Economist.

Ironically, given last week’s events, the British versions of these programmes seem to show a country more at ease with itself than the US — which has been brought almost to bankruptcy by the brinksmanship of its politicians, whereas in Britain they entered a coalition.

And on the other channel in the room next door were Piers Morgan and Sharon Osborne on America’s Got Talent. On second thoughts perhaps not all British exports are that tasty.

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Linguaphone

I wrote the following in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world – looking out into the sea as our ferry weaves between the courses of various huge container ships and tankers. (I’d actually typing into a Word document to post later on but I could have blogged fromt here if I’d been prepared to pay £4 for an hour’s wi-fi – bit steep I thought).

It’s nearly a 9 hour journey from St. Malo to Portsmouth – and would be quite pleasant if it wasn’t one of the busiest days of the year (a Saturday in August) which means all the reclining chairs and seats in the cafe have been marked by the massed middle-class British on holiday with the same sort of territorial ferocity that I learnt at Trégomeur Zoo Park that tigers display when they urinate to mark their patch. I’m typing from up on the sun deck.

I was a very frequent visitor to Europe until the end of the last year, flying on average on a fortnightly basis – mainly Germany but also plenty of trips to Sweden, Spain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Portugal and even Croatia. These trips have tended to be for two or three days and to cities and hotels where English is pretty much the universal language.

I’ve spent longer in Europe on holiday but, most recently, these trips have been to Gozo (off Malta) where English is an official language and to the Algarve, where, like the Costa del Sol,  it may as well be. I’d probably need to go back over ten years to previous long holidays in France to experience anything like the ‘foreignness’ of the past week.

Foreignness is a relative term somewhere like Brittany. It’s stating the obvious to say it’s very easy, even with a barely scraped GCE in French, to drive, shop (especially in their vast hypermarkets), have a meal and do touristy things. Not only is there a lot of standardisation of laws and regulations (traffic, for example) through EU membership but also because all Western European countries are subject to the same sort of globalisation as we suffer in the UK – though perhaps not as extreme – not just the French love of McDonald’s but all the consumerist brand goods that are now imported from China.

Much popular culture is converging too. I spent most of a Thursday night watching the French version of ‘Masterchef’ on TF1 – a bit more of an X-Factor style audition with three celebrity judges, including an odd Johnny Depp lookalike, than our shouty version with an artificial bit of suspense over who’s the last one through. Very useful research though for me as I want to construct a fictional cookery programme in ‘The Angel’  in which James was a contestant.

It seems that many of the fundamentals of life in the EU are homogenising – and perhaps this is a theme that I have in the novel — evidently by having a European leading character but maybe exploring this cultural assimilation more subtly by having Kim first move to cosmopolitan, multi-cultural London as a staging post, then breaking through into areas of life that are considered sacredly British (or even English) – like the pub.

It’s probably the social customs and decisions made on a local level (and perhaps influenced by – relative – unchangeable like the climate) such as architecture that mark the countries out as culturally different – even eating habits are converging – I saw ready meals and pre-prepared salads in the Super U and Carrefours.

And, of course,  language is still the most striking and difficult cultural factor that makes cultures different. It’s not too difficult to visit for a week and order a meal – but a far tougher prospect to get to a level where one can communicate on a serious level. I know the length of time it’s taken for a friend of mine who’s bought a place in Spain to achieve ‘A’ level Spanish.

I’m thinking of having Kim get quite frustrated when she realises she has the vocabulary to deal with metropolitan life but she’ll realise in the countryside that she’s back at schoolchild level English in certain fields — although maybe many of the natives won’t know how to describe certain things either.

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Masterchef

It’s Masterchef final day and I watched it after Manchester United’s referee-induced ten man capitulation to Bayern Munich — which might bring a smile to Kim’s face but not mine (btw she supports Chelsea).

I watch the programme occasionally with a morbid fascination — partly due to the stilted formulaic presentation where Greg Wallace and John Torode always have to shout at each other about one finalist. The other reason is to why these mad people actually want to be chefs. One of the finalists is a paediatrician who, no doubt, earns a six figure salary from working about three and a half hours per week, twenty weeks a year for the NHS while running a private practice at £1,000 an hour. However, it’s good that there are crazy people like for whom food is a passion as that’s what James is going to have a go doing at The Angel so they’ll make his decision — to invest his redundancy in a pub — quite credible. (In fact, he’ll tell Kim that he’s been a failed contestant on a programme like Masterchef — and he won’t be lying.)

Yet all these people maintain they have a passion for doing a job that is inherently financially unstable, involves very anti-social hours and requires high levels of skill for little guaranteed financial reward. I’ve always thought these people must be barking mad.

Compare them with those who would-be novelists — the people who expend huge amounts of effort sitting in front of a computer screen on their own, investing time, most of which involves anti-social working, in something that may never be seen by more than a handful of people — even if it defies the odds and is published.

Makes you wonder who’s really the most crazy doesn’t it?