School Dinners

Hello Blog. Sorry to be missing so long. Had a nice holiday in which thinking took second place to rambling of the ambulatory variety, wandering not wondering, round Somerset market towns in the February cold and getting back to a nice warm cottage afterwards. Have sent off five report forms to the Good Pub Guide; it was that sort of holiday.

The fantastic woman I took with me has now gone back to work and I've made an appointment to see her in July.

Anyway the point. Ah yes. Jamie Oliver. There's a divisive character. I meet people who love him and I meet people who hate him; rarely do I talk to anyone who ignores or merely tolerates him.

I love him. As a TV chef he taught me the great truth that the main skill of the cook is shopping. Buy the best ingredients and you will be on a winner.

As a youth worker I loved the way he invested time and effort in the young people who became the stars of Jamie's Kitchen and the restaurant 15. He seemed to have a wonderful balance of encouragement and challenge, gave disadvantaged young people a million second chances and cried real tears at their failures. Great TV and a good cause to boot.

Now, with Jamie's School Dinners, he has taken on a much more difficult project - that of persuading the nation's authority figures that the market forces at work in school food has left the kids to be fed on a budget of 37p, for which all that can be provided is 'scrotum-burgers' and this is having a serious affect on young people’s ability to actually concentrate in lessons.

Furthermore the ingredients for leek and potato soup, if sourced from the school kitchen bulk suppliers, come out at over £1 a portion. Since you can make a reasonable portion with one leek and one potato that is alarming.

I think he might change the way we see food in this country. But if he does he will need someone alongside him to communicate with the young people en masse. His garbled attempt at an assembly seemed to include the expression 'yeah, no, nice one' about a hundred times. So calling the army of church-based youth workers out there. Can one of you write to the BBC and offer your services for whatever the next project is for any occasion when Jamie needs to communicate with a crowd of young people? He needs you.

Or we could just get him on one of our training courses.