“Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”

“Les bonnes résolutions sont des chèques tirés sur une banque où l’on n’a pas de compte courant.”

- Irish author, dramatist, convict and wallpaper expert Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900)

Happy new year! “Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit”, as they drilled it into us at school all those years ago.

Here are a few more season’s greetings in the south of France, besides the usual “Bonne année”…

• Occitan: “Bòna annada” (or “Polit Nadal e bòna annada” – Merry Christmas and a happy new year)
• Provençal: “Bòna annada” / “Bono annado”
• Catalan: “Bon Nadal i feliç any nou”

A court case caught my eye in this morning’s Midi Libre. On Christmas Eve, two guys were “having a few scoops” (as we’d say in Ireland), they log onto Facebook, one of them comes across his ex, and she’s – wait for it – talking with a friend! Of the masculine variety!

In a drunken rage, one of the guys rushes over to her home in Villeneuve-lès-Béziers, his mate hot on his heels, “because I was afraid that he was making a mistake,” says the latter. Here’s a bit of the original story:

Le 24 décembre, deux copains passent Noël ensemble en famille. Tout se passe bien jusqu’à ce que l’on se branche sur Facebook, un réseau social sur internet, et que l’un des hommes tombe sur son ex en train de discuter avec un ami. Ivre de rage, il se précipite chez elle, à Villeneuve-lès-Béziers, son copain à ses basques, « parce que j’avais peur qu’il fasse une bêtise », explique ce dernier.

Anyway, big row ensues, heads bashed, stitches stitched, car smashed up etc, but both men get off on a technicality, because a big mistake has indeed been made.

The citation says they were arrested for acts of violence in Béziers, but all this took place in nearby Villeneuve-lès-Béziers. Which is not the same thing, m’lud.

Free country music at Villeneuve-lès-Béziers

The latter has:

• Its own mayor and own mairie (a very fancy Hotel de Ville et Médiathèque, built three years ago)
• Its own stretch of the Canal du Midi
• Its own restaurants – about 20 of them, including a Chinese
• Its own Tour du Château (OK, one remaining bit of a castle tower)
• Its own festivals, including one for Paul Ricquet (the man behind the Canal), and the blessing of the horses, and a jazz festival, and various fireworks nights, and a country music festival…

With all that, how could one confuse Villeneuve-lès-Béziers with Béziers?

Villeneuve-lès-Béziers (population: 4,000) is about five kilometres down the road from Béziers. It’s nearer the sea, close to the airport.

The commune has its own name (in Occitan it’s “Vilanòva de Besièrs”), its own history (it evolved from the eighth century onwards), and its own nickname for about four centuries – along the lines of “Vilanòva la Cremada” (er, “Burnt Newtown”) because it was burned down during the Albigensian Crusade in 1220.

Lès does not mean les

The commune’s website explains the various name changes, and how “lès” doesn’t mean “the”. It has a Latin root, along the lines of “near”.

A very important linguistic difference, surely, which may be news to you or me, but you’d think the long arm of the local law would have known all this…

Villeneuve vient de: “ville nouvelle” (le nom Latin “Villa”, désignant à l’origine “maison de campagne” ou “ferme” a dérivé vers “hameau” ou “village”).

Villeneuve fut construite en 778 sur un sol inculte qui faisait parti des biens donnés par l’Empereur Charlemagne à un certain Valchaire.

Elle s’appelait autrefois “Villeneuve la Crémade” car elle fut incendiée par les troupes de Simon de Montfort et conserva ce nom jusqu’en 1631. C’est à partir de cette date que sur les registres des actes d’état civil, la commune a pris le nom de Villeneuve-Lès-Béziers.

Le Mot “lès” n’est pas un article mais une préposition signifiant “à coté de, proche de”, issu de la racine latine “latus”.

A simple drink to celebrate the new year. Half French, half Irish. First, chill some champagne, or better still a bottle of Blanquette de Limoux.

Don't forget to have a designated driver if you intend hitting the cocktails this New Year's Eve

(A quick historical and foodie aside: This sparkling wine from Limoux – quite near Carcassonne in the Languedoc 0 was the forerunner of champagne and is up there with the best. It has an understated, dry, mellow, refined personality, and local lore has it that the method for making it was pinched by Dom Pérignon.

“Blanquette” (from the Occitan for “small white”) appeared as far back as 1531 in stuff written by Benedictine monks at an abbey in Saint-Hilaire – well over a century before their fellow monk Dom Pérignon visited the region.

While the demand for champagne has plummeted across the world due to the recession, and prices have dropped accordingly, Blanquette has always been far more affordable.

You can pick up a good bottle for just €5 or €6, and names to look out for include Antech’s Blanquette de Limoux Grande Réserve, and the more modern Michel Olivier Blanc de Blancs Crémant de Limoux – very dry, light, fresh and zesty it is too. End of foodie and historical aside).

Anyway, back to our cocktail. To the champagne or Blanquette, add a dash of the sloe gin that you made earlier this autumn, and (optionally) a drop of almond essence.

The result is a fizzy pink and perky cocktail. While sloe gin definitely improves with age, over time it also goes from that vibrant reddish pink colour to a more subdued hue.

If you don’t have sloe gin, you could make do with a dash of Hercule Poirot’s favourite tipple, Crème de Cassis. The result would be a Kir Royal or – more accurately – a Kir Pétillant if you’re using sparkling wine other than champagne.

If you don’t have sloe gin or cassis, here’s something else we tried, at last New Year’s Eve bash…

Pomegranate champagne cocktail

Either make fresh pomegranate juice for this or buy ready squeezed, but check the label  – it really needs to be pure juice, with no sugar added.

Take two pomegranates. Squeeze the juice from one of them and pick out the seeds from the other.

Pour a little juice into two glasses, add a few pomegranate seeds, top up with champagne to taste, enjoy. Bonne année!

Related posts:

• Make your own sloe gin
• Un apéro for openers

The biggest TV channel in France, TF1, has bought the rights to “MasterChef”, the long-running BBC cookery show. Both the London Times and the Daily Telegraph latched onto the month-old announcement for some reason this morning, both seeing it as a major “shift in the French approach to culinary arts”.

“They may consider their country to be the home of gastronomy, but when it comes to cooking on television, the French are looking to Britian (sic) for inspiration,” says the Telegraph.

Un Dîner Presque Parfait goes to Nantes

“With Gallic viewers tired of traditional, stuffy cooking programmes involving patronising chefs, television executives are using British cooking show models in an attempt to liven up their schedules,” says the Times – and the Telegraph too, word-for-word.

The other day we were talking about “Come Dine with Me” and its French version on the M6 channel, “Un Dîner Presque Parfait”, which has over two million viewers.

“Come Dine With Me”, in case you haven’t seen it, is billed as a sort of cross between “MasterChef”, “Wife Swap” and “Through The Keyhole”. It’s about far more than just rustling up a three-course meal, as it’s basically about class and pecking order.

As frequent poster Maudgone points out, the French version is “far less bitchy, less drinking and more serious on the ‘entertainment’… more emphasis on table decoration and food presentation and a bit more polite”.

The show has versions in Greece, Turkey, Spain (“Ven a cenar conmigo”), Hungary (“Vacsoracsata”), Germany (“Das Perfekte Dinner” ) and the US (“Dinner Takes All”).

Then there’s “Oui Chef” and “Vive la Cantine” by France’s Jamie Oliver copycat, Cyril Lignac. Try to spot the Oliver  formulas from the following official descriptions of the two French shows:

“Oui, Chef !” est une émission dans laquelle Cyril Lignac a quatre mois pour sélectionner et former une brigade de 10 jeunes en difficulté dans le but de leur apprendre un métier et d’ouvrir son propre restaurant…

Le concept (for Vive la Cantine) est simple : le chef, aidé par un nutritionniste, a décidé de se pencher sur le problème des cantines afin d’améliorer l’ordinaire des demi-pensionnaires. Plongé dans l’univers de la restauration scolaire, Cyril va mettre en œuvre son talent et son enthousiasme pour surmonter les difficultés…

Meanwhile older shows on French TV such as “Bon Appétit Bien Sûr” (Joël Robuchon on France 3 with top chefs doing fancy dishes such as asparagus with cold mousseline sauce or marinated scallops with grapefruit) are going out of fashion. But why are these French channels all going for so many Brit TV leftovers?

The two papers reckon it’s partly due to the recession, and quote Isabelle Grillot, director of programmes on Cuisine TV: “The French have fallen back on friends and family and they want to rediscover how to cook for them. There is a desire for cooking shows to be entertaining and frankly you only find that abroad. French chefs don’t tend to have that offbeat side to them.”

“In the old days, it was all about obedience and respect. You listened to the chef and did what he said. But the days of chefs ordering everyone around are over. People have got rid of their complexes. They’re prepared to try things themselves and they’re not afraid to make mistakes. These shows are a good thing because they are making cuisine more popular and they prove that it is not just reserved for knowledgeable insiders.”

- François Simon, restaurant critic for Le Figaro

If the French are already lapping up “Come Dine With Me”, “MasterChef” could be an even bigger hit on French TV.

In Australia it is huge. This year’s final was the most popular programme (apart from sports) since the country’s electronic measurement system began – bigger than Australian Idol, Australia’s Got Talent and Australian Big Brother.

The US version of “MasterChef” will start next year, fronted by Gordon Bloody Ramsay.

Related posts:

‘Come Dine With Me’: bitchy food TV

Alistair McGowan, the impressionist on the BBC, reckons that a lot of young people don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas. “It’s the time we celebrate the birth and the life and the work of Morecambe and Wise.”

Yes, the TV at Christmas is truly awful nowadays, but are we too nostalgic? Do we look back with rose-tinted 3D glasses? Here’s  RTÉ’s Christmas Show from 1970. Horrendous stuff…

And more of it…

These are very ropey home recordings, and the faces that we older viewers might recognise include Eamon Morrissey, newsreader Charles Mitchell and Mike Murphy.

So, what’s the difference betweeen then and now? Not that much really.

Today there are more Irish channels (RTÉ 1, RTÉ 2, TV3, TG4, 3E, City Channel etc) than all the Irish AND the UK ones you could get in Ireland three decades ago (RTE, BBC 1 and 2, ITV). But when there were only those three or four channels, it was like all the talent was concentrated into them.

Now it’s spread out, diluted. As we move from the dark old days of black and white to today’s full colour, digital, HD, press-the-red-button-now and all the other  technological advances of recent times, what do we get? Here’s a typical clip from just two years ago. Pass me the sick bag.

We were strolling on the beach just outside Dublin yesterday morning, and I couldn’t help but think of Paul Brady singing “Arthur McBride”. As Christmas songs go, “Arthur McBride” is easily among the most unusual.

“Arthur McBride and the Sergeant” would have been quite common on folk records in the 1960s, then Paul Brady recorded it for his brilliant album with Andy Irvine in 1976. Here’s a TV recording of a youthful Brady doing the song the following year:

At one level it could be classified simply as an anti-recruitment song, and was first collected around 1840 in Limerick. Perhaps it was referring back to Napoleonic times, the wars between the French and British empires.

But Brady’s rendition goes beyond all that. It has an amazing, slightly cheeky but spine-chilling feel about it, and it soon became the definitive version of the song. It’s hard to place, but everything seems right about it: tune, rhyme scheme, singing, guitar and lyrics.

The story starts off with a long rambling sentence, setting the scene and forewarning of the great ructions to come…

If you need the full lyrics, music and tablature (the guitar tuning he uses is apparently an open G chord), check out his website at PaulBrady.com.

And what’s all this to do with the Languedoc? Well, Paul Brady was on the flight with us from Carcassonne to Dublin last January.

Meanwhile, for it being on Christmas morning, joyeux Noël à tous!

It’s a very crisp Christmas Eve morning, and we’re off to the beach to pick some seaweed for our supper: Irish panna cotta.

Panna cotta is a classic Italian set dessert, which usually uses gelatin as its setting agent. This Irish vegetarian alternative uses something called carrageen. The recipe is also based on milk rather than cream, so it’s lighter, cheaper and slightly less naughty.

Gelatin  comes from the collagen inside animals’ skin and bones. (Strictly speaking, in the earliest Italian recipes they’d use boiled fish bones instead of the gelatin, but let’s not go there).

Carrageen moss (or, again strictly speaking, a substance inside it called carrageenan or carrageenin)  is a seaweed that’s abundant all around the Irish coast.

Irish panna cotta recipe

You will need:

• 8 grams of carrageen moss
• 700 ml milk
• 4 tablespoons of caster sugar
• 1 vanilla pod
• Zest of 3 lemons
• 2 eggs, “undergoing a trial separation”

Soak the carrageen in lukewarm water for 15 minutes.

Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds.

Drain the carrageen well and put it in a heavy pan with the milk, a tablespoon of the sugar, the lemon zest and vanilla pod.

Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer for half an hour until the liquid is as thick as yogurt.

Strain the liquid through a sieve into a bowl, discarding the vanilla pod. Be sure to push all that natural gelling stuff from the moss through the sieve.

You’ve separated the eggs. Put the yolks in a bowl and beat in the rest of the sugar. Whisk in the strained milk mixture.

Put the egg whites into a food mixer and whisk “until they form stiff peaks”, as they say.

Fold them into the mixture with a large metal spoon. The mammy always says you should use a figure of eight movement, as this gets rid of any blobs of egg white.

Spoon the mixture into six moulds or ramekins. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour until set.

Where to get carrageen moss

Besides going to the beach and gathering your own fresh carrageen, healthfood shops stock dried carrageen, and it’s even beginning to appear in Irish supermarkets. Show off – ask Sharon at the checkout “Where do you keep the Chondrus Crispus?”

“La Carrageen est assez difficilement trouvable en France mais peut etre que certains poissoniers pourront vous fournir.”

- La Palais des Délices blog (rough translation: Carrageen? Tough to get in France, but you could ask your friendly fishmonger)

Irish seaweed cuisine

Carageen, from the Irish word carraigín (“little rock”) is a superb carbohydrate gelling agent, with powerful binding and textural properties.

In French it has various names besides “la carrageen”, including “petit goémon”, “goémon frisé”, “goémon blanc”, “goémon rouge”, “mousse d’Irlande” and “mousse perlée”. One of its many names in Breton is “bejin behan”, which sounds to me like an Irish writer.

Carrageen and other wonderful seaweeds are abundant around our coast, and seaweeds have been exploited in Ireland for a millennium or more.

(A musical aside: there’s a famous old song in Irish called Dúlamán, about a “dúlamán Gaelach” (a collector of seaweed for dyeing clothes) and “dúlamán maorach” (a collector of seaweed to be cooked and eaten). The song has been reinterpreted since the 1970s by the likes of Clannad and Altan – listen to this high-speed version by Anúna.)

From the early 1700s, ash was extracted in kelp kilns and used in soap and glass-making, as a fertiliser, and for iodine. Seaweed is also used in animal feed and for making ice cream.

Seaweed is fast becoming a big star in modern Irish cuisine. It’s also quite a growing business – see Seaweed.ie

“Few people know that seaweed has been part of the Irish diet for centuries. Smoked dillisk is still eaten in pubs throughout Ireland instead of crisps.

“My grandad was always fond of eating dillisk with his pint of Murphy’s (a kind of stout). It also adds a lovely smoky sea flavour to risottos.”

- Irish chef and food writer Clodagh McKenna

If you fancy some more seaweed recipes, check out Prannie Rhatigan’s new book “Irish Seaweed Kitchen”.

The Irish Seaweed Centre at University College Galway has a few more recipes – test driven by marine scientists -  including Carrot and Dillisk Bread, Sea Vegetable Salad Marinated Atlantic Wakame Salad, Dillisk Broth, Laverbread, and Sweet Kombu with Soy Sauce and Honey.

Now that you’ve bought that frozen lobster home from Lidl, and seeing as it’s Christmas, how about doing a traditional Irish dish called “Dublin Lawyer”?

Lidl gives a recipe for Lobster Thermidor, but “Dublin Lawyer” is much easier. It’s quick and delicious, lobster cooked in whiskey and cream. Nobody quite knows how it got its name, because while it’s rich, expensive, decadent and full of booze, whatever could the connection with a Dublin lawyer be?

Dali's famous lobster phone - ideal for calling surreal Dublin lawyers

Anyway, Aidan MacManus serves a scrumtabulous version of this at The King Sitric in Howth. If you’ve ever met Aidan, you might just mistake him for an old sea dog.

But unlike the Lidl version, Aidan uses proper live lobsters, caught by little boats in the bay just outside his harbour-side restaurant.

Here are the ingredients for my mum’s trusty version:

• 1 live lobster
• 1/2 cup butter
• and…

…Hold on a sec. For the best flavour I do realise you’re supposed to kill your lobster just before cooking after going out in a boat with Cap’n Aidan at three in the morning, but there’s little point when you’ve just bought your wonderful Lidl lobster from its “Luxury For All” range.

Actually the Lidl lobster is disappointing by comparison. It’s called something like ”Homarus Americanus – Star of the Sea” and it’s very un-live, very frozen, very pre-cooked and very very tiny. Maybe we should start again…

Irish lobster in whiskey and cream sauce

• 1 Lidl lobster, thoroughly defrosted
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup Irish whiskey
• 1/2 cup double cream

Anything else is optional really. A twist of fresh juice from a lemon perhaps. A teaspoon of dried mustard. Some salt and pepper of course. Some chopped chives to garnish.

Lobster and Guinness, a classic combination

Slice the lobster in half lengthwise. Crack open the claws with the back of your chef’s knife or a hammer (cleaned) from your toolbox.

Remove all the flesh – a metal skewer is really good for this – and cut into large chunks.

Keep both halves of the main body shell for serving.

Put the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat until it starts to foam, but make sure it doesn’t go brown and burn.

Quickly sauté the lobster chunks in the butter for a couple of minutes, until warmed through but not coloured.

Add the whiskey (you could warm it up slightly in a separate wee pot). When the whiskey has heated up in the pan, set light to it.

Let the flames die down, turn off the smoke alarm, pour in the cream, heat briefly for a few more seconds. Add the squirt of lemon and optional mustard.

Season and put back into the half shell. You can place it under a hot grill for about two minutes until the sauce is bubbling, but this is optional.

Serve with fresh lemon wedges, baby new potatoes and a mixed salad.

Then hold onto those shells  – they’re great for making fish stock later.

Thackeray’s lobster

Thackeray's travel writing from a bygone age

“You take a lobster, about three feet long…”

That’s how magazine columnist and novelist William Makepeace Thackeray starts his lobster recipe in “The Irish Sketch-Book”, which describes his travels in Ireland in the mid 19th century.

Mind you, those were the days when a three-foot lobster was no big deal. These days they tend to be a tad smaller.

Our “monster lobster” from Lidl is really tiny. I’ve looked at it again. It weighs a mere 325g, or 11.4 oz, including all that frozen seawater. Hardly a foot long, little more than an overambitious Dublin Bay Prawn, and it may well turn out to be a watery load of rubbish, and hardly worth the “Serves 2″ bit at the end of it.

Anyway, ye olde properly three or four foot long lobster turned out to be the star dish in Thackeray’s meal with some of his mates in a restaurant in Salthill (this is not the Galway Salthill but probably the place near Monkstown in south of Dublin).

Thackeray’s lobster has a surprisingly spicy sauce (see above). It has mustard, a mere half a pound of butter, and catsup – in Thackeray’s time that meant the mushroom catsup, not Heinz ketchup or HP sauce.

After starting with a three-foot-long lobster, his recipe seems to end with a well proven hangover cure.

Lobster Thermidor

Both Thackeray’s lobster and Dublin Lawyer are much older than the far better known French dish Lobster Thermidor.

The latter was created in 1894 by Marie’s, a Paris restaurant near the theatre Comédie Française. It was supposed to honour a new play called “Thermidor” by Victorien Sardou.

The play went on to be a roaring failure, unlike the dish, which must be the best known lobster platter in the world.

Related posts:

• What does the 18th Brumaire mean (including “thermidor”)
• Salvador Dali’s Tour de France postcards

Eric Cantona is back in the news again – as a photographer. And the former soccer star has snapped back at President Sarkozy’s self-proclaimed big debate on national identity.

“Le grand débat sur l’identité nationale” is going on in town halls across France between now and 4 February and supposed to ask big questions like “Qu’est-ce qu’être français aujourd’hui?”

But even the dogs in the street know that it’s just an opportunistic ploy by Sarko in the run-up to the regional elections, and now this “debate” is turning rather sour.

As the Guardian has reported, these meetings are “ending up being a fracas of nasty and racist comments with no intellectual content:  ‘Actually much worse than what you would expect a discussion at a local bistro to be,’ sums up a prefectural member of staff at the city of Orléans.”

But back to Cantona. He was being quizzed by the media at the presentation of “Elle, Lui, Les Autres”, his new book of photographs for leading French charity la Fondation Abbé Pierre (which supports the poor, homeless and refugees), when a question came up about the national debate…

‘To be French is to be revolutionary’

“Etre français c’est être révolutionnaire, d’abord,” Cantona replied. “On ne peut pas accepter tout ce qui se passe.”

“They talk of (schools having to sing) the Marseillaise, of the French language, but politicians are arseholes. To be French is to be revolutionary, and refusing all this politicking crap. We cannot accept everything that happens.”

“The national identity? It’s policymakers trying to sway the debate before the (regional) elections.

“Everyone is aware, but they serve the soup as they want it (‘mais on leur sert la soupe car c’est ce qu’ils veulent’). So stop talking about it, and talk about things much more serious.”

Indeed. Very serious. So tell us Eric (and talking of soup) what about that dressing room crisis across the road at Man City? Would Sparky have been in the potage if he hadn’t got shut of Richard Dunne?

Cantona’s charity book

Seriously though, Cantona says that in taking these photos it was a question of “ne pas tomber dans le misérabilisme, mais de montrer que ces gens sont beaux et combatifs”. Exactement.

“Eric Cantona, Godfather of the Foundation, reveals in this collection of photography an unknown facet of his talent. He relinquished his copyrights to the benefit of the Foundation in order to finance new actions for the housing of under privileged persons. We already know the footballer and the actor, but Eric Cantona is also a photographer.

“Nurturing a long term passion for the image and being the Foundation’s godfather for three years, he used his sensibility to offer a new perspective on the women and men supported by the Foundation.”

- The English-language version of Fondation Abbé Pierre’s website talking about Cantona’s new photography book. (No, I don’t think they mean “godfather” in the Marlon Brando sense)

Cantona himself comes from a family of immigrants from Spain and Italy. On his father’s side, his grandfather emigrated to Marseille from Sardinia.

On his mother’s side, his mother’s parents were Catalan separatists – her father fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and they had to retreat to France after he suffered a serious injury to his liver in 1938.

I’ve only seen a couple of photographs from Cantona’s book, but they look rather good. “Elle, Lui et Les Autres” (Desclée de Brouwer publisher, €28)  is available in all good bookshops, or please make a donation at the Fondation Abbé Pierre website.

Eric Cantona photographs for homeless charity

Rémi Gaillard, the master prankster from Montpellier, is at it again. In his latest video he’s racing around his home town in a Formula One car…

No doubt “Top Gear” will be showing it soon. There’s plenty more of his stuff on www.nimportequi.com.

Related posts:

• ‘Are you a shop for parties?’
• Rémi Gaillard’s new cycling prank
• His earlier Tour de France video
• All lost in the supermarket

Never before have there been so many food programmes on television – and fewer people actually cooking. One surprise hit at the moment is Channel 4’s “Come Dine With Me”.

Diarmuid Gavin

Ireland’s most famous  landscape gardener, Diarmuid Gavin, is in the show’s special celebrity edition this week, starting tomorrow night.

The other cooks are Hannah Waterman (daughter of Dennis and formerly of EastEnders apparently), David Gest (“I’m a Celebrity” and Liza Minnelli’s ex), and Sherrie Hewson (Coronation Street/Loose Women).

While this week’s shows will probably be absolute chaos, the usual recipe for “Come Dine With Me” is deceptively simple:

• Take 4-5 complete strangers in the same town
• Each in turn hosts a dinner party for the rest
• At the end of each night i.e. each programme they vote secretly (usually in a taxi on the way home) on that night’s meal
• At the end of the 4-5 programmes the host with the highest score gets £1,000

So it’s about 4-5 people taking turns to do a meal. Yet a simple recipe can create very complex things…

1. In at least one episode the guests (and cameras) will poke around the house and through the host’s knicker drawers
2. One contestant has too much vino
3. Another takes umbrage about all the terrible double entendres that some English people love so much
4. Someone else “isn’t a fish person”
5. Another guest will find the musical entertainment (an optional extra) very boring
6. Another harbours a deep-seated grudge from the previous night
7. The very camp contestant and the ex-SAS Freemason are now Very Best Friends
8. But half the others vow that they never want to see anyone else ever again
9. Meanwhile the kitchen is on fire and tonight’s host also has to pop out to the neighbours for 12 fluid ounces of something or other

Chuck in some bitchy comments and a tongue-in-cheek voiceover that wouldn’t be out of place on “Eurotrash” and you have cheap ‘n’ cheerful daytime TV that’s far more compulsive than “Hell’s Kitchen” and other reality TV food shows

Like, um, “The Wire”, “Come Dine With Me” can’t be watched as isolated episodes. It builds up like a soap opera, as the dinner party dramas unfold episode by episode. That’s why it’s such a big success.

This is food show as soap opera, and when you watch it back-to-back on one of those E4 or More 4 or E More 4+1 stations, it all begins to make perfect sense.

If “Come Dine With Me” is food as soap, here are ten more types of UK and Irish food show organised by their TV genre…

1. Food as sexy middle-class lifestyle

Nigella Lawson

Examples: “The Naked Chef”, “Jamie at Home”, anything with “Nigella” in its title

See Jamie! See Jamie run! See Jamie slide down the banisters! See Jamie scoot off on his Vespa and gobble samples in his friendly deli and his local Sainsbury!

See Nigella! See Nigella in her silk dressing gown! With perfect make-up! See Nigella at the zoo with her kids! See Nigella “take the bus” to the shops and stuff her gob in her kitchen and the dinner party afterwards!

Yes, this is food with sex symbols, plenty of soft-focus gastroporn shots and more and more family rubbish.

Do we really need to have Jamie’s entire extended family in a Christmas kitchen bizarrely decorated with giant paper doilys to get a few decent cooking tips? No. Give us Mr Singleton himself, Nigel Slater, any day.

But to give Jamie his due, he has created several compulsive soap operas, involving trainee tearaway chefs or a school cook.

2. Food as a classroom

Examples: Delia Smith, Darina Allen, Rachel Allen, in fact anything with “Allen” in the title

No frills, cut to the chase, stick to the kitchen, often in a studio, piles of recipes, not so much fancy camerawork. These are domestic science’s answer to Ryanair. The direct descendants of Fanny Craddock but without the food colouring.

3. Food as strange family sitcom

Example: “Food and Drink”
At one time on a distant planet long, long ago, “Food and Drink” was a BBC show with a surprisingly hard-hitting magazine format, with Chris Kelly and Michael Barry at the helm.

Then it went the pseudo-lifestyle route, with Anthony Worrall Thompson as the cuddly Uncle figure in a big riverside house, another Uncle figure (Oz Clarke) living in a shed at the bottom of the garden where he quaffed lots of wine, and a mumsy Auntie figure (whatsername) cooking stuff in the driveway in a mobile catering van.

This was food-as-sitcom, a genre that the Beeb finally seems to have abandoned and replaced with the decidedly un-Mumsy James Martin in “Saturday Kitchen”.

4. Food as travel show

Keith Floyd

Example: Keith Floyd

Look! We’re in a sunny place! I’m soaking up the local culture and sights and DOWN HERE CLIVE! There have been many devoted followers (Two Fat Ladies, Hairy Bikers, Anthony Bourdain etc etc), but the late great Keith Floyd was the punk who pioneered it all in his imitable (cue the comedian impersonators) way.

On Irish TV in recent years, we’ve had UTV’s Jenny Bristow flying off to the Languedoc, or at least with a few film inserts that give you brief snatches of Carcassonne and Béziers.

And RTÉ has tapped into our greatest export to France, the brilliant Trish Deseine, with two series in Paris and Provence (though, strictly speaking, most of the latter seemed to be the Languedoc).

Unfortunately RTÉ then repeats the same formula ad infinitum with lesser presenters, e.g. “Catherine’s Italian Kitchen”.

Rick Stein used to be a fitting heir to Floyd in the travelogue genre, but his latest show about what to do with Christmas leftovers was a terrible rip-off, just recycling his recent Asian series. Bah humbug!

5. Food as gameshow

Example: “Ready Steady Cook”

Who will you vote for? Red tomatoes or green peppers? “Ready Steady” pioneered this genre and launched a thousand TV chefs. Now it’s a boring parody of  “The Generation Game”.

With limited time and ingredients, it can never go into slow food territory, and too many chefs rely on the predictables (red onion marmalade souffle).

6. Food as X Factor

Example: “Masterchef”

“Masterchef” used to be deadly serious and posh, with highbrow music and serious tasting/judging sessions. Lorded over by Loyd Grossman, it was almost saying “Look! We’re ‘Mastermind’ with food!”

Then Greg Wallace and John Torode took over, and not just with ordinary people either but with Z-list TV celebs as the contestants. Gimme “Hell’s Kitchen” any day – not the superficial Ramsey version but the inspirational Marco Pierre White one.

7. Food as makeover programme

Example: “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares”

Your mission, if you accept it, is to take on the role of health inspector, cookery school, accountant, interior decorator, paintball team leader and lifestyle coach. Save that joint from bankruptcy, big boy!

8. Food as challenge

Examples: “The Rankin Challenge”, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, “Take on the Takeaway”

I’m a celebrity chef me! You’re an ordinary viewer you! Or just a local takeaway. I’m going to beat you, despite all your specialist knowledge, because my knowledge is even better.

9. Food as Hugh Fearnley-Eats-It-All:

Hugh Fearnley-Whatsit

Example: Anything with “River” or “Cottage” in the title

Hugh really is his own genre. “A Cook on the Wild Side” was survival course cookery, not quite laddish.

It mutated into a “Green Acres”/”Good Life” pastiche, where Hugh had to live and barter in a quaint English cottage for a year with all his New Friends From The Village, and then a second year, and a third year. Now it has expanded into a gigantic River Cottage Enterprise Experiment, a big brand with a rather different momentum, but still enjoyable.

Similar “food-as-project” type shows include “Jimmy’s Farm” about a pig farmer mate of Jamie Oliver, and a cable TV show about a chef who converts a barge into a restaurant and sails it from England to Paris.

10. Food as “Top Gear”

Example: “The F Word”

What a studio/location food programme would look like if Jeremy Clarkson was a loud-mouthed, laddish, bullying celebrity chef.