More Detail,Please. Does she Say "lovely Boy" a lot ?

But isn't the point that the target viewer enjoys seeing people being humiliated?

The question should probably be "why are chefs on TV so angry?" I've been in a few professional kitchens, and have yet to come across any shouting. I'm sure it exists, but most workplaces won't work if the atmosphere is typified by intimidation and fear.

I always find it a bit baffling. I assume this is all by design, because stories with no antagonism and conflict are boring. This would also explain why all talent shows must have one nasty person such as Simon Cowell or that dancer (whose name escapes me) on Dancing on Ice.

Along similar lines, getting it over and done with quickly appears to be a major focus of all cooking programmes. Everything is always conducted in a state of panic, against the clock. I understand the need for speed in restaurants, but I don't think the majority of the viewership intends to take it up professionally. I assume people who are interested in these programmes actually like cooking, so therefore would not be in such a huge rush to finish and get back to watching TV etc.

The two exceptions to the above, that I can think of, are the Nigella one, which is not about cooking at all, and ones with Delia Smith, which I believe appeal at some sort of fundamentally primal level - because they are like spending time with your mum.

..with my children last night.

They (the FBBs not my daughters) are 30 something brothers who come across all touselled and loveable and unshaven and larkish and 'good in the kitchen' - and they also do the Nigella thing of flirting with the camera (not QUITE as lasciviously).

But I think they might be the sort of people who scream at waiters, or at the camera crew if a take goes wrong. Just a little bit too much ego and self adoration on display. This might be completely unfair and after all working on recipes in front of a camera isn't easy so it may just be suppressed panic we noticed.

But if you watch it with the idea that if something goes wrong they start having a massive foul mouthed hissy fit the whole thing becomes hysterically funny. My wife was disgusted with us but the three of us were howling by the end of the show.

A bit like an old BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice many years ago (not Colin Firth) where D'Arcy strides up to the house and proposes against his better judgement to Elisabeth - she knocks him back and he leaves. I always imagined him kicking the dog when the door closes.

Anyway its always worth seeing this -

Particularly Gordon Ramsey, who simply comes across as an extremely unpleasant individual.

who are angry. I think chefs who do not crave fame, attention and the need to be a personality are more balanced people who realise that all that anger is counter productive. I think, on the whole, TV chefs mix up rudeness and anger with honest feedback and passion.

I mean who would buy a car that had been built by someone losing their temper all the time? Or get an electrician with a short fuse (sorry). So why would you want food cooked by someone who is constantly angry?

was an Australian TV chef back in the 80s who came across as a jovial Mr NIce Guy....so when the audio for this blooper reel emerged a few years ago, it caused no end of hilarity (and quite an elevation in street cred for the long since vanished PRC)

(Warning - the language is a bit on the salty side)

has been (or let himself be, or wholeheartedly taken up the option of being) Hollywoodised into a sweary, sadistic übercurmudgeon. The UK versions of Kitchen Nightmares gave the impression that he was genuinely interested in the people and how to help them do things better - albeit in a formulaic format - and there was always the odd scrap of useful how-to-do-it info to pick up along the way. The US versions are all about drama queens and ego clashes - the food is no longer centre stage, swearing and strops are.

And Hell's Kitchen is just a sado-feast.

We are still catching up with the end of Masterchef Professionals around our way. In the finals week the three remaining contestants were sent to El Celler de Can Roca in Catalonia which is the "second best restaurant in the world," apparently. What was noticeable about the kitchen there, and this also appears to be the case the higher up the restaurant food chain (geddit?) you go, was how quiet it was. The chefs all appeared to be highly skilled and generally supportive. The result appeared to be bloody good food.

One of the things I like about Masterchef, in all its variants, is that at some point in the series one of the contestants will be in trouble. This is a contest with only one winner and cooking doesn't get tougher, etc. But at this point the other contestants (and even the judges) pitch in to help.

Gordon Ramsay/Macro Pierre White have created a hugely profitable personas which have probably rubbed off on some chefs. Just as the Alan Sugar school of business will have created its own followers. But maybe it is not as widespread as we think.

There is a necessity for urgency in restaurant cooking which shows itself as anger, impatience and raised voices. I worked in a kitchen as a KP (washing pans) and the chefs were always shouting at each other and then got utterly sh*t-faced together most nights.

The very annoying problem with that section of Masterchef is the 'start poorly-end well' routine for every single bladdy contestant. I don't know why they bother with that bit, the weakest part of a good TV programme, as it has little or no impact on the judges' decision.

Because they do such a vital high pressure job.

Like warming up some meat & veg, and making sauces.

It must be tough, unlike the jobs that real people do that can actually be important, dangerous, helping others and most importantly - hard work.

who trained to be chefs, one of whom worked for Marco Pierre White in the early 90s. They both got out after less than 5 years having cracked under the relentless pressure and the lack of a life outside of the kitchen. Both went from being casual smokers at Uni to about 2-3 packets a day and a need for a third of a bottle of some spirit almost every night just to calm down.

As for temperamental chefs I think many carry a huge weight beyond cooking and running a kitchen of umpteen staff. It takes a substantial financial investment to open and maintain a restaurant. I don't think it's an easy job, particularly when it's been proven time and again that one bad meal has the potential to ruin and close a restaurant. Under those circumstances I don't see how they don't qualify as "real" people or as hard workers.

When you work in a sector that has a high turnover of failed restaurants and of employees working in restaurants to me that indicates a difficult profession whether you're working in a Little Chef or L'Autre Pied.

As for Masterchef I watch it because I enjoy seeing people excel in difficult situations or seeing the look on their face when they realise that their passion in life is also something they are actually talented at doing and are told so by professionals. The Iranian lady's joy at being told her trio of desserts were exceptional having cooked for her family all her life was fantastic television: witnessing ordinary people have a light-bulb moment, realising they have the potential to express themselves with their hitherto unknown extraordinary talent.

Masterchef doesn't revel in car crash television, far from it. Again last night's was a good example of this when John Torode vented his frustration at one of the contestants for over-complicating his dish when he obviously has the skills and ideas to put out a good plate of food. It was a perfect illustration of the show's appeal: watching someone handle the difficult process of making their ambition and talent a saleable commodity in their chosen profession.

Very much not angry. So laid back I'm not sure he knows the camera's there sometimes, and as for his
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pauses while he tastes his food. He's my favourite.

... relates to guilt - I'd feel guilty if I was charging £120 for a starter.

is a normal way to behave.

My daughter, who is 17, works as a waitress in two local restaurants (saving up to buy a car).

In one, she worked for chef who routinely shouted and swore at the staff in the most unpleasant and personal terms, and she has come home in tears a couple of times. He has now been sacked because of this. I'd be interested to know if he behaved this way at least partly because he thought that is how chefs ought to carry on. Whatever his reasons, I can only think ill of him for taking his 'issues' out on a 17 year old schoolgirl.

In the other restaurant, the chef does occasionally let off a bit of steam with a bit of bellowing and cursing if things are going a bit wrong, but this is never personal and he always lets his team know when they've done a good job and treats them with respect, so his odd fit of temper is water off a ducks back most of the time.

I love cooking - it is a great way to be creative and please your friends and loved ones. However whilst i am preparing a meal I am a pressure cooking waiting to go off. Don't know what it is but I cant abide anyone being in my space - as soon as it is finished and declared a success everything is back to normal.

But I couldn't take the pretentiousness of it...I've been to many "High End" restaurants and the food is crap. Give me well made Fish and Chips any day.

A: They don't. In fact, they don't have to be angry at all.

He'd do some serious damage. He's got arms like my legs. But with more tattoos.

and predictable 'arc' of the show makes it unwatchable for me now. No-one died. It's unnecessarily OTT.

A good programme that has definitely jumped the shark (IMHO).

Treacle tart makes you fart,
Custard powder makes it louder

It's all an artificial Anglo-Saxon TV construct. British television thrives on conflict and time pressure. In other cultures, cooking is seen as isn't seen as some sweary, macho competitive activity. It's part of their identity.
In Chinese culture, chefs are the lead guitarists of cool. I've sat with peasants in Sichuan who would spend hours discussing the right way to prepare and cook a chicken. When demonstrating how to cook, anyone who started shouting and thumping the table would be viewed as a complete idiot and loser. Good chefs are respected as calm master craftsmen (and women). They might argue vehemently about the right way to prepare a dish, but they would never demean themselves with displays of threatening and petulant behaviour you see on Masterchef.

I have a friend who ran a restaurant for a couple of years. She did the cooking and had one person to help her with the preparation and working in the front. Technically she was a chef, as she was in charge, but she always described herself as a cook. To her a chef is someone in charge of a large kitchen with a number of subordinates working for them. She has always said that she wouldn't want to be a chef because about 90% of the job would be quality control and man-management, much like the role of the production managers she used to work with in a manufacturing company. And that's how I see chefs - managers. There are a lot of aggressive and bullying managers in all walks of life. They don't get much sympathy or any excuses. Hard to see why a manager in the food industry rather than say the plastics industry should. (But I have no reason to think most chefs are like that.)

And, if you can't stand the heat...

is to be believed on his Desert Island Discs (worst record selection ever?) then that first documentary Boling Point collated weeks and weeks of footage into how ever long it was and they only chose the rare occasions he got angry.

No, I don't believe it either.

that annoy me about Ramsay (not least his tireseome ubiquity on US television), but I think the thing that annoys me the most is his insistance on pronouncing 'restaurant' as 'rest-RUNT'.
It usually bring to mind another word which rhymes with runt...

all proliferate the notion that bullying is normal and expected. It's not. This is, after all the nation where anti-bullying is a big thing. The issue is floated on news, current affairs shows and that. But when it comes to what used to be known as 'light' entertainment they give us performing bullies. X-Factor, Strictly, Dancing on Ice, Masterchef, etc, etc. Most people would not (and should not) tolerate bullying in their work place, would they?

Training as a chef seems a bit similar to being trained as a ballet dancer in that both are examples of the sort of art where teachers seem to think the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff (or the boys from the men, or whatever cliche you want to use) is to humiliate. They are perceived as high-stress professions where the point is to seek perfection, to create something new within an art that is very rule bound (true of both cooking and ballet) and if you can't take that level of humiliation/public failure, you don't belong in the profession. Of course this is not true of all teachers in cooking schools or ballet schools, but it's true of a great many.

I'm speaking partly from experience as my daughter is in a ballet school and you'd be surprised at the things that teachers say to these girls and the tone in which they say it. It's this odd culture where you want the teacher to pick on you, though, because that means she thinks you've got potential. Otherwise you just get ignored. And friends in cooking schools have talked about the same thing.

but how lovely was John Torode with him? That's more like it.