Ready, Steady, Get Tae Fuck

If there were a Top Trumps game of Annoying Celebrities, Ainsley Harriott would surely be the unbeatable card. The one that, when found in your dealt hand, causes a smile of satisfaction to briefly twist your mouth before you settle to the serious business of trouncing your oponent.

Unctuous, patronising, obsequious, irritating, smug – there just aren’t enough Bad Adjectives to adequately describe the abject cuntiness of Britain’s Twattiest Celebrity Chef*. He’s like human effluent – unpleasant, ubiquitous and in need of a long-term sustainable solution**.

I really don’t know how to adequately précis my loathing for this man. You could argue that I could simply ignore him; after all, it’s not like I’m compelled by law to allow him to irritate me this much. But, in case you haven’t been paying attention for the last two years, this is what I do. I become irrationally annoyed with things/people that I should really just avoid, and vent my pathetic spleen via the medium of the internet, with which to make your lives ever richer.

So.

We watched Ready Steady Cook by accident the other day. Ainsley was doing his usual mugging and gurning and offering a steady stream of sub-Carry On innuendo to the hapless contestants. This time, it was Nicholas Parsons (who, to be fair to Ainsley, is an insufferable old queen and deserves anything dished out to him) and Marion Keyes (who, to be fair to Ainsley, is over-chirpy, slightly mental and not as fantastic as she probably thinks she is, at least, not any more) who were improbably attempting to create gourmet fare from a fiver spent at Waitrose***. Ainsley launched into full new-best-friend mode, and I began to snarl.

So, says Ainsley to our Marion, what about all those books, then? Ooh, yes, replies Marion, frantically grating something, it all started with Watermelon you know.

At this point, Ainsley sacrificed any pretence of interest. Oh, yes! he exclaimed, with the over-excited tone of a man who just loves spending time curled up on the sofa with a mint chocolate Options and a big old pile of chick-lit, that Watermelon. That's a fantastic book!

Please. Marion could have opined that actually, she thought Fred West was a bit misunderstood, really, and Ainsley would have happily agreed. And then, he did it again to Nicholas Parsons.

Actually, offered Nicholas, I spend quite a lot of time on cruise ships these days. Quick as a flash, Ainsley was right in there. Ooh, of course. I hear it all the time - people saying they've been on a cruise and there was Nicholas Parsons. Oh, fuck OFF. As if people are approaching Ainsley Harriott in the street to mention that they were on a cruise last week and you'll never guess who they saw? Only that one off of Sale of the Century! As if. Cunt.

I hope, in my heart of hearts, that all the other celebrity chefs hate him too. That he is the Paul Daniels of the profession. That, when he walks into the green room at the BBC, James Martin and Brian Turner look at their watches and leave, muttering about how they've left those scones in the oven, and isn't it funny how time flies, and oh, look! There's Lowri Turner!

I realise that this may be the most irrelevant post I have ever subjected you to. But I hate hate hate the man and his Teflon personality so much that I simply had to share before I went mental. Again.

As you were.

* I know, I know. But really, with his fat tongue, Mockney sensibilities and ugly children, does Jamie Oliver really need to take up any more of my valuable loathing time?

** Like Guanatamo Bay, or lethal injection, or something.

*** If it was me, I'd buy fish paste, some croissants and a tin of rice pudding. Take that, celebrity chef!