This week my wife and I have watched with increasing incredulity a BBC programme named The Great British Menu, in which chefs vie to reach the finals and cook for ‘special guests’ at a banquet. I am prepared to wager that such guests will not include Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The preposterous brief issued to the latest trio of hopefuls by the judge, tattooed Old English Sheepdog lookalike Michael O’Hare, was to pay tribute to 70 years of the National Health Service. They duly responded with paeans to ‘the medic who saved my brother’s life’ and other trite statements fresh from the scriptwriters’ computers.
Somehow they managed with their main courses to link Dexter beef, Bajan lamb stew and suckling pig to the corridors full of dying pensioners on trolleys. One even waxed lyrical about Liverpool’s scandal-hit Alder Hey hospital.
My alternative NHS menu would be as follows:
1) Offal Alder Hey. An uncooked mixture of heart, kidney, liver and spleen in memory of the tragic infants whose organs were removed without their parents’ knowledge.
2) Jus C.diff. A thin brown sauce to remember all the patients who died, dehydrated and desperate, after falling victim to hospital superbugs. This includes my mother. RIP, mum.
3) Sorry, the next course has been cancelled because the chef was unwilling to work overtime.
I accept that this is in extreme bad taste, but no more so than the BBC shamelessly subverting a food programme to further its Leftie agenda. It makes me bloody cross.
