Search results matching tag 'Jamie Oliver'

If Rio Ferdinand and Jamie Oliver can do it, I can do it

2182355 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:48:00 GMT

In light of the news that Manchester United and England footballer Rio Ferdinand is going to launch his own digital magazine, I've decided to launch Rich, an uncensored insight into the exciting world of, well, me.

Jamie Oliver's Jamie concentrates on food, natch, and Rio, according to the press release, "aims to give a snapshot of the world that Rio inhabits and will be a reflection of his interests", with features including celebrity interviews - 50 Cent and Mickey Rourke in the first issue - plus icons of sport, music, fashion, film and TV, technology, cars and travel.

Rich will feature an equally impressive array of essential content for 35+ once aspirational males, including ‘A night down the pub' where I transcribe occasionally amusing conversations between me and my nefarious friends in the boozer, and cutting edge fashion spreads from world-renowned stylists and fashion photographers including my wife and maybe even my mother-in-law who did buy me a new jumper for Christmas.

Media buyers looking to tap into the potential goldmine demographic Rich will no doubt attract can contact me at Media Week.

Jamie Oliver has no friends

2371004 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:23:00 GMT

Jamie Go Home, an anonymous, and frankly thorough blog, that sheds some light on the argument that not everyone in Rotherham - the location for Jamie Oliver's ambitious yet trite C4 programme Ministry of Food - is pleased with the celebrity chefs' presence in the hard-up town.

From the blog: "Jamie Go Home was inspired by the decision to film the television programme ‘Jamie's Ministry of Food' in my home town of Rotherham.

"I believe that this show and the twisted logic behind it are an example of everything that is wrong with Britain in 2008.

"My aim is to speak out against celebrity worship, the nanny state, corporate greed, media manipulation, regional stereotyping, cultural elitism and hypocrisy.

"Rotherham is a great place; full of warm, intelligent people. The town has a proud industrial history and a tradition of political radicalism."

Earlier this year, Rotherham city council sparked some outrage from local residents and fellow politicians for paying £100,000 to keep Oliver's Ministry headquarters open, a place were residents can drop-in and take free cooking lessons.

Oliver is pleading with other towns in Britain, well actually every town, to do the same. So far some have taken the bait, the Guardian reports that Bradford, Scarborough and Hull have expressed interest in opening Ministry of Food headquarters in their city centres.

Jamie Go Home is an interesting read if you have the time, not fully a platform to debase Oliver, but more of a proud cry from the over 249,999 residents of Rotherham who do know what boiling water looks like.

When viral food goes wrong

2228399 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:55:00 GMT

There was a time I loved Jamie Oliver. Then I hated him. Now I'm loving him again. I'm loving him because he's invented "viral food". This is Jamie's idea of spreading recipes around Rotherham by getting people to "passing on" recipes to friends.

In the first programme Jamie boldly laid out his plans by drawing out his his nice viral food theory in which within 10 turns of "passing on" all 200,000 people across Rotherham would have been reached. Simple.

Or not so simple as it turned out in practice. As a viral theory geek it was clear why his theory isn't working as well (or simply) as he first thought. These are:

- Make it simple to engage with: Jamie's recipes are too complicated to get to grips with and pass on. The first 2 recipes that he tried to get people to pass on were meat balls and salmon. Meatballs may sound simple - in practice they're a pig to make and easily fall apart. Spag Bol would have been a much simpler option.

- Make it simple to pass it on: Worse than a complex idea, is bad execution of the "viral agent" itself. In this case the viral agent was a recipe card - or in fact a piece of paper with a badly laid out recipe on it (as one of the Rotherhamites pointed out!) A Sainsbury recipe card kinda format would have been much better. Nicely compact and easy to pass on . . .

- Target influencers: First off Jamie's approach to finding people to "pass it on" was to cast his net wide for anyone at all to create the viral effect - which largely consisted of socially awkward single mothers. Rather than picking at random, a clever approach would have been to pick community influencers - e.g. pub staff, cornershop workers etc. People who are connected and likely to more easily create his ideal food viral.