My Turn to Cook on Come Dine with Me

MY TURN TO COOK ON COME DINE WITH ME Come Dine With Me is a popular and extremely un-real reality TV show in the UK, where five strangers in the same town take it in turns to prepare a three course dinner for one another and get points off their dinner guests for their cooking, presentation and hospitality skills. The show is presented by a very sarcastic, often simply downright rude but always-unseen narrator. A dear friend of mine was a competitor on the programme recently, though she did badly, which was no fault of her own and very unfair on her. I have actually been to her house and had wonderful food & hospitality there. I started debating whether or not to avenge myself on the show for the injustice they inflicted on my friend by taking part myself. I chickened out, but this is how it might have gone had I participated. First of all, with regard to the judging. There is something odd about a show where the competitors award points to each other. It seems that if you are generous to the other competitors, and award them 7 or 8 out of the 10 points available, you give them a better chance of beating you. My marking would therefore be ruthless. Even the most perfect host and cook would get a maximum of 3 points from me. I do think the hosts should be able to award points secretly on the quality of their guests, as some of the diners on the show behave appallingly, getting drunk, being rude, and even rummaging through the hosts private property. A diner who turns up with a bottle of ketchup in her bag for pouring over food I’d slaved over would immediately be kicked out of my house without appeal. So, to my menus, in case I should participate. My lack of culinary skills will not handicap me one jot. THE STARTERS – Beans on toast. I will go with a popular brand, naturally, not the cheap discount supermarket varieties. This will be a no expense spared extravaganza. I will ensure the diners see the tin so that they can be appropriately impressed. MAIN COURSE – The pizza of the diner’s choice from the menus provided. I will simply dial the local pizza parlour service promising to deliver within twenty minutes, and have them fetch it round, ready to eat. As we wait for the grub, I shall entertain my guests with my armpit whoopee cushion humour, and slide show photographs taken on a family holiday in Malaga in 1977. I will naturally ask my guests to contribute to a generous tip for the delivery-chap when he brings our food to the door for us. As to the drinks, I shan’t be producing fancy wines or champagnes while there is a crate of the finest Australian lager still only half opened from the last party I threw some time around the Millennium. From the sell-by dates on the rusty dusty tins I think they will find the beer to be of an excellent and palatable vintage. After the meal, and the casting of empty pizza boxes into the recycler, I shall present the PUDDING – Actually a packet of Hobnob biscuits. If they have been pleasant and entertaining guests they may eat up to two each. My generosity knows no bounds. I’m sure if I go with this one day the £1,000 prize money will be mine for sure.

Arthur Chappell.