TV review: Celebrity Masterchef

To satisfy my televisual palate, the series which opened on Wednesday night should have involved a group of "celebrities" challenged to show off their cooking skills before a panel of judges who then decided to boot one of them off the series because of their complete lack of talent.

Then they could arrange for them to be slowly spit-roasted over an open fire while television licence fee-payers whipped them with nettles. Now that's entertainment!

That is not the way programme planners work these days, unfortunately, and so the viewing public was treated to a dreary, hour-long insight into the culinary trials of a quartet of "celebrities" and no despicable punishment was wrought on any of them for failure at the end.

A brief synopsis is as follows. The "celebrities" were loud-mouthed, toothy, former newspaper editor and know-it-all Janet Street-Porter, former Sugababe Heidi Range, Jo Wood, former wife of Rolling Stone Ronnie (notice the recurring use of the word "former"?) and current comedian Katy Brand.

The upshot? Young Heidi got kicked off for demonstrating all the culinary imagination of a member of the cannibalistic Carib Tribe of the Lesser Antilles by ruining seabass noodles for her totally resistible piece de resistance in the final test on the programme.

To illustrate just how bad it was, Jo's effort to impress judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace was basically burger and chips – and she was deemed to have been better than our Heidi.

Between that denouement and the start of the show there were 60 minutes in which I was not only tempted to, but in fact did, go out and walk the dogs, Simoniz my car and mow the lawn.

Tedium apart, why do so many cookery shows insist on concentrating so much time on "nouvelle" cuisine? This was one of them.

"The potatoes should not go round the edge of the plate," Jo and Janet were told after slaving over a hot thing to produce a prawn curry.

Why not, I say? I understand a dead dog garnished with a runny poached egg might not be pleasing to the eye but a classic meat or fish dish with good vegetables and a flavoursome sauce which actually satisfies your appetite doesn't have to look like the Venus de Milo to be worth paying for.

Isn't food about flavour? If I'd wanted to look at something nice I would have gone to an art gallery!

Nouvelle prompts me to recall a line in the classic film The League of Gentlemen – a squaddie, asked what is wrong with the food dished up in the Army mess, says: "Well, it's just been messed about with, like". Here, here!

For me, the best dish of the night came from Katy. She made her own puff pastry (no mean task) and produced an open chicken pie with "stuff".

It looked gorgeous and well worth trying, even though the judges thought it lacked the flavour of the accompanying delights. I was almost tempted to cancel the pizza delivery order.

Celebrity MasterChef was once banished to the teatime schedules but its return at prime time will no doubt delight many.

Street-Porter's brash attitude and "who're you lookin' at?" approach to social interaction will please many and some of the tests will also obviously prompt behind-the-sofa giggles at the sheer delight in the misfortune of others – schadenfreude, as our German cousins call it.

That said, I can only honestly recommend it for those who make a meal of celebrity culture.

Must sign off now, the pizzaman is here.

Simon Hardy