Marco Pierre White and the Undertaker, two scary looking men with eyes that could kill...This week the nation's tv schedules have been dominated by cooking related programmes, we've had BBC2s Kitchen Criminals in which the likeable top chef John Burton Race has been trying to make decent cooks out of people who hitherto couldn't boil an egg. It has been interesting, if not riveting tv so far.
We've also been subjected to another reality tv cooking show on BBC2 The Restaurant. Raymond Blanc and his top team of restauranteur empolyees are the judges in a competition in which couples are pitted against each other to win their own restaurant and in doing so they will become business partners with the top French chef.
The Restaurant's format is slightly different from other similar realilty tv shows of the cooking genre, in that Blanc and his top team really do test all aspects of the competing couples skill-sets. Everything from restaurant management, marketing, budgeting and cooking is tested thoroughly and quite entertaining The Restaurant has been too.
In last night's episode the extremely annoying Jacqui and Sam were thankfully turfed off, largely because of their appalling grasp of the numbers.
While The Restaurant has the makings of a decent pot-boiler, ITVs Hells Kitchen has been grabbing all the headlines, not least because there's a new head chef in the rather scary form of Michelin star chef Marco Pierre White.
Hells Kitchen's former head chef Gordon Ramsay, was apparently once reduced to tears by White. However, Marco says he didn't force Gordon to cry, 'it was Gordon's decision to cry'...
Ramsay has a somewhat confrontational management style in his tv shows, he's all too often foul-mouthed, often when shouting down his subordinates within his 'brigade'.
Marco Pierre White has an altogether different management style in the kitchen and while he has sinister looks that could curdle fresh milk and send your blood cold in the blink of an eye. The contrast between White and Ramsay is marked.
Everyone in the Hells Kitchen apparently loves White. For this reason I've been wondering if the Hells Kitchen bosses might be encouraging Marco to turn on the frighteners in bid to get nasty in the remaining days of the competition.
White could easily stand in for the WWE's undertaker, he possess similar scary looks, but in this reality TV show he's something of a big pussy-cat.
