When a cook bites off more than he can chew

Jamie Oliver is suffering from brand over extension  Dream school takes slebs (admittedly brainy ones) and endeavours to use their star dust to engage difficult teens in education. These kids have all the appeal of anyone who is as likely to put a brick through your window as look at you. So on the one hand we should applaud his intentions (if they are as pure as I hope). The problem is that well meaning motives are not enough to assume you can go dabbling in anything you choose. In the same way people seem to think that because your opinion can be heard it should be heard, Jamie’s knack for turning around disaffected yoof seems to know no bounds when actually it should.

It’s the Fifteen gig all over again but this time without the cooking and that is the problem  In his cheeky chappy way (he refers to teaching these kids as that “school malarky”) he appears to be saying that where professionally qualified teachers have failed, a few days of slebs and TV can succeed. Of course there is no come back when said slebs disappear to their next project and these kids realize they were merely feeding reality TV’s voracious appetite for cheap stars.

Teachers around the country cringe as his programme ironically panders to the narrow minded instincts of middle class parents everywhere. Bloody teachers!

What next? Well he could try another public sector area like health. At least Jamie’s hospital would serve the food Heston Blumenthal would approve of and I like the idea of Jamie operating with a pestle and mortar and spatula throwing in a few herbs and removing an appendix with the kind of panache mere surgeons could only dream of. Alternatively he could refocus on current operations. I had a coffee in Fifteen the other day and the atmosphere was not all that.