Ready Steady Cook has been on afternoon TV for, oh, ages1. It’s not something I tend to watch as it is not a program that sits nicely in the background. It is, for want of a better description, “high energy”: it’s nominally a competition and there is a lot of chat and cheering. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that daytime TV for me is usually a murmur in the background while I pretend to work.
This week was different. I actually recorded Tuesday’s episode as the gorgeous Reem was appearing, “competing” against Tim from the Urban Food Market. The producers must have been beside themselves with joy to have found two such articulate participants who seemed really natural on TV. Oh, and who had some mean kitchen skillz, too. For those who are unfamiliar with the set-up, contestants (who have some sort of pre-existing relationship) arrive with a grab bag of ingredients and are matched with a chef who develops a series of dishes based around the bags. There’s a ridiculously short time limit and then dishes are described and tasted, but not by the audience, which is responsible for deciding the “winner”.
It’s an old-fashioned kind of show: very good-natured and chatty, with a “nobody goes home empty-handed” approach to rewarding the contestants. The host, Peter Everett, is almost frighteningly upbeat and clearly gets most of his job satisfaction from trying to interview people at the worst possible times. His schtick is to wring maximum double-entendre from any utterance and to play the himbo host. His elaborate what’s-this-new-fangled-thing enunciations of terms such as “blog”, “blogger” and “twitter” when chatting to Reem were gold. The show manages to attract some of the big-name chefs in the country and it is a good chance to see them in action in a less structured, controlled way than seen in other shows.
Reem has a link to the episode on her blog.
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Ready Steady Cook is on at 2.00pm, Monday-Friday, on Ten.
1. Since 1994 in the UK, to be precise, and for nearly five years here.
I loved watching Reem on TV, I don’t usually like this show either the UK or Aust version but this was a very enjoyable episode.
Also didn’t Reemski look about 20 years old, must be that beautiful olive skin