Dear Rachel Khoo…………Shut up!
Cookbook writer & minor TV cook/sleb, Rachel Khoo has decided that the TV world needs to be told the truth. In an interview released today in the Radio Times, Khoo says:
It’s great that Mary Berry got a primetime TV show, but I don’t think there are enough women chefs on TV,
But then goes on to say:
You’re competing with a saturated market and I’m not as established as Nigella [Lawson] or Lorraine [Pascale]. You are also up against a lot of things as a woman.
So let’s first break that down. Rachel Khoo put herself in the bracket of ‘Chef‘, she gained a pastry degree from Le Cordon Bleu in just 3months & as far as I can work out, has yet to work under any mentor or chef within the industry. Looks like she’s taken a leaf out of a certain Luke Thomas’ book.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to spot the flaw in the whole ‘there aren’t enough women on TV,, and ‘it’s a saturated market’ in what Khoo is babbling on about. So what is Khoo’s problem? Well she didn’t get re-commissioned for a second series is the real nuts & bolts of it, probably coupled with the fact that she’s getting a little bit older (and all the baggage that comes with it).
She’s also facing the fact that there are more female foodies in the market place. One in particular; Gizzi Erskine, is getting quite a lot of exposure at the moment, & Khoo probably has a case of ‘but why isn’t it me? syndrome’. Unlike Khoo, Erskine has an element of ‘one of the lads’ about her, coupled with the fact that she’s spent time in a professional kitchen (2years at St. John, I’m told), & her twitter feed isn’t contrived like Khoo’s (which incidentally, sometimes reads like a PR firm is doing it for her).
If Khoo is so upset that sex (and all that it entails) sells, then quite frankly she needs to look at herself. Maybe her next book should just have a plain cover & no more glamorous photo-shoots, if she feels so strongly about how the media seem so dependant on appearances.
But what I do find quite offensive, is how Khoo has made this more about looks over talent. I’m pretty sure Angela Hartnett would have a burgeoning TV career, was it not for the fact she prefers to cook for customers rather than her ego on the idiot box. Hartnett has done her time, and while I mean this with the greatest respect Ms Hartnett (if you’re reading this), she bears the scars of it. She isn’t a size 10, far from it, but she has respect of the industry, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a bloody good chef.
Ultimately this is a PR stunt, gone wrong. Rachel Khoo does have a second series coming out, but on a satellite channel where she’ll get a fraction of the 2Million viewers she got last time around. A real case of today’s news, tomorrows fish & chip paper
So Miss Khoo, if I was you, I’d get use to the fact that you’ll only really ever be remembered for little 8minute slots on BBC Saturday morning hangover TV; in between James Martin trying his best not to bastardise another nation’s culinary heritage, & real chefs doing an omelette challenge.
Maybe time for a new USP Miss Khoo?
The full article can be read here: The Radio Times website
