Jim Davidson
Aged 53
Food Heaven: Pie and Mash
Food Hell: Vegetables and vegetarians
Stand-up comic Jim Davidson is already joking that he’s going to hide the knives in Hell’s Kitchen!
The showbiz veteran says of Marco’s formidable reputation: “I don’t think he’s there to bully, I think he’s there to inspire people, but I am going to hide the knives!”
Jim says: “Seriously, I like cooking, and I thought this was the opportunity to learn off of the best chef in the world. If he says he’s only going to do it for a couple of weeks and then stop doing it again well then I’d like to be part of that.”
A fairly competent cook himself, Jim wants to learn more about the technical side of preparing food. In his repertoire he counts ‘all the roasts’, any Chinese dish, Thai, Indian and says he just ‘throws it all in’. He often ends up cooking mammoth family meals but says he can never get his timing right.
“At Christmas my girlfriend Michelle’s Mum and Dad came over and I was cooking for about 18 people, so I had this bloody great tin full of potatoes and of course the ones on the bottom were turning to mash and the ones on the top where like granite! It went horribly wrong and we had the worst dinner ever.”
Jim is really looking forward to learning all about the finer points of cooking, like how to poach more than one egg at a time.
“You know when you make a vortex in hot water to make poached eggs and you drop one in and the centrifugal force keeps it in the middle, where do you put the other six? You put them on the outside and they go splat and look like cooked snot! I want to know these things. And I want to know about joints of meat as well,” Jim says.
Jim is a true carnivore and absolutely loves his red meat.
“Vegetables are what food eats,” says Jim. “Cows eat vegetables! I’d steal from a vegetarian shop keeper because they wouldn’t have any energy to chase you. I reckon I eat a cow a month. I love red meat, tonnes of it. I eat my steak rare, alive, I just take its horns off and wipe its arse.”
Jim says at home he does all the cooking and he makes sure girlfriend Michelle does the washing up.
“I cook, she washes up, and she’s really good at it as well. She’s not very good when I’m in the kitchen cooking and stuff’s got to be done quickly, she’ll be over nattering to her mates.”
Jim’s career as a stand-up comedian means he rarely gets to enjoy good food on the road, by the time he comes off stage most restaurants are closed.
“I like steak cooked properly although you very rarely get it, especially in this country. Staying in hotels when I’m here on tour, the food is appalling. I’ve been in England four days now doing gigs and all I’ve had since I’ve been here is fish and chips four times.”
He was egged on to take part by his youngest children Charlie, 18, and Elsie, 13, whose words were: “Do it Dad you’ll be famous again!” But the former presenter of hit TV shows The Generation Game and Big Break says he doesn’t view Hell’s Kitchen as a means of reviving his career.
“Elsie wants me to be back on the telly again in England but I can’t be bothered. You spend half your life chasing celebrity and then the rest of your life trying to avoid it. I hate celebrity now, all these people who think they’re celebrities it’s just awful. I just really want to learn. I’m not bothered about it being filmed or anything like that, I want to do this because I like cooking.”
Jim says his favourite chefs include Marco, former Hell’s Kitchen chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, as well as Rick Stein and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall because they both love the British countryside.
“Gary Rhodes is a nice chap, he went out to Iraq for me to cook for the troops one Christmas. I run a charity called The British Forces Foundation and he went out and cooked for me there,” he says.
He then adds that Rick Stein would be in his dream political party.
“Prime Minister would be Jeremy Clarkson, Home Secretary would be DJ James Whale, Foreign Secretary Richard Littlejohn, and I wouldn’t be in it because I live in Dubai!”
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