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How do you feel about Jamie Oliver, now?

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:30 / 29.03.06

So, in the 'Agent Smiths OH NO' thread, ibis said:

Barbelith dislikes... Jamie Oliver

And I'm wondering if this is still true.

As summed up in this Observer article (which itself may influence your opinion one way or another I suppose):

His career has been unlike many people's - first, he was loved, like a new puppy, and then he was hated, absolutely loathed by the press in particular, and now he's loved again, and also respected. Everybody says it was the School Dinners campaign that turned him around. And he certainly needed it; it's easy to forget how low he sank in 2000 and 2001.

I'm sure it's not at all difficult for most British 'Lithers to remember quite how much Jamie Oliver was hated and derided in 2001. After all, many of us were doing the hating and deriding at the time. However, I genuinely wonder - as in, this one I don't think I could predict in advance - whether that has changed, reflecting (or independent of) a more widespread change in the public perception of Oliver. Certainly, there can be little doubt that campaigning to improve the diet of young children in the context of school dinners is a good thing, and in doing so Oliver showed a willingness to get his hands dirty (with something other than olive oil) that is noticeable absent from pretty much all of his contemporaries.

It's also hard not to concur with his assessment of the early Naked Chef days - that that was him at 21, daft haircut and all, but that by implication anyone at 21 might make an immense prat of themselves given pride of place in a TV show that was as much about selling a lifestyle as it was about cooking (one wonders how recently Oliver started to think about how the rich are eating better while the poor are eating worse, and whether he feels any need to atone for some of the more 'aspirational' elements of his earlier career).

Many of those Sainsbury's adverts are, it has to be said, somewhat harder to forgive.

But what's your verdict?

08:36 / 29.03.06

Can't forgive the ads, sorry.

08:38 / 29.03.06

Don't forget the campaign to train up young chefs either.

I've never really hated him, but I like his cooking/receipes. I do think that the praise for his campaign to improve diets was a little overstated, especially as diet is only one factor that contributes to childhood obesity. Regular exercise and access to outdoor areas to play and explore is just as important but I think that gets left out the equation because to put curbs on traffic, counter fear of imaginary padeophiles and so on would be a bit more difficult.

08:48 / 29.03.06

I like him a lot but then I'm a fat, greedy bastard who likes good food.

I pretend to like him even more than I actually do just because it gets Ganesh in a state of agitation when I big him up or watch his tele programmes.

08:49 / 29.03.06

Despite never seeing more than the occasional few minutes of his earlier shows, I used to find his ubiquity annoying. But like most people I respect what he's done with the school meals. I even caught a few episodes of his recent series in Italy and I was quite impressed to see that he spent months there living with locals and learning hot to cook from them. He even learned enough basic Italian to speak to them, and included bits (with subtitles) where some of the locals were saying his food was rubbish. Of course that could all be a contrived image but it certainly made me think of him as more human than your usual celebrity chef.

09:09 / 29.03.06

I’ve defended Jamie Oliver before. Those ads were dreadful, but he is essentially an actor in those and most of the cringe is in the script. And both his school dinners campaign (which wasn’t primarily about obesity, I don’t think, but rather basic nutrition and digestive health) and the Fifteen project were both hugely impressive, I think.

But then I was rather put off again by his last series. I thought he was pretty condescending a lot of the time – waxing lyrical about the tradition and regional identity embodied by the various rural cuisines one minute, then criticising their parochial lack of sophistication when they were non-plussed at his attempts to improve them.

But overall I think his admirable qualities outweigh his slightly twattish ones.

09:14 / 29.03.06

I've never liked the bloke but will grudgingly admit that the school dinner campaign has done some good and created lively debate. However, I'm still cynical enough to think that it was, at least in part, nothing more than a marketing ploy to enliven a flagging public image.

But really, his ubiquity is just a symptom of the media's tendency to completely overdo celebrity exposure in the name of ratings. Look at Carol Vorderman, Graham Norton, Davina McCall - all done to death until the public switched off. Although it pains me to say it, Oliver at least has a talent (cooking) and had the foresight to broaden his horizons and do something different - the others are just presenters of light entertainment tripe!

Not in the Face

09:16 / 29.03.06

Don't forget the campaign to train up young chefs either.

Thats actually the bit that made me change my mind about him. When he did that show I was cynically expecting him to then drop the idea having had the publicity. But he appears to have in fact structured his entire business around the idea of helping train young people, who are unlikely to otherwise get an opportunity like that, as cooks. Managing to do that day-in-day-out, away from the glare of the TV, and running a restautant is pretty impressive however much his adverts chafe the eyes.

The Natural Way

13:25 / 29.03.06

Yeah, 13 was a bloody good, altruistic idea that Oliver's maintained in the absence of media-coverage. I think Oliver-hatred has more to do w/ a hatred of his marketing than it does anything else. I mean, who really believes it was his idea to litter his recipe book with all those fast-breeding 'pukkas'?

Tryphena Absent

13:48 / 29.03.06

Jamie Oliver has basically done for a whole host of kids what the chefs at the River Cafe did for him and that's kind of nice.

22:06 / 29.03.06

jk rowlings beat him out for book of the year, but i have actually always been a jamie fan, from afar. i thought 13 was [and still is!] a wonderful initiative and he at least has a passion about eating [ie diet], not just food. such should be a chef, no?

seems from the reports i have had from here that his campaign for healthier school diets is a positive direction to aim for; why isn't everyone on his side, getting it right? instead of squabbling with claims of interfering...

and sure, ill, diet is part of a whole strategy of health, no reason to disparage a concerted effort on getting one part, at least, right. that's what i mean about everyone working together: celebrate this aspect and get creative solutions happening for exercise, and other facets of the whole picture.

go jamie, go!