I used to go out of my way to avoid Masterchef, but it wasn't just Grossman's strangulated vowels I was averse to it was the fact the programme so resolutely targeted the chattering classes, of which I will never be a member (or at least I think that's what people mean when they say I lack class).
I've found it much easier to get on with the mass-market proposition it is now even if this week (8pm, BBC1, 10 March) the strapline should have been 'Cooking doesn't get more repetitive than this' (if I see another scallop, black pudding and peas combo, I swear I will start self- harming).
My favourite contestant this week was the deluded fool who dished up plain fish on plain pasta with a plain sauce (what skill!). He didn't last long. Unlike, I hope, mad Terry. He actually made it through to the next stage a few weeks ago, but none of the contestants since have been nearly as entertaining or potentially brilliant in a Marco Pierre White way. Roll on the quarter finals!
If only I could say the same about part two of Inside John Lewis (9pm, BBC2, 10 March). The first part was turgid beyond belief and a wasted opportunity. This was a chance to show that the department store chain (Waitrose was mentioned only in passing) is not the parochial beast many fear it has become. Yet, if anything, it achieved the opposite.
How ironic that just a week after Waitrose announced it was roping in Delia and Heston as brand ambassadors to cement its mass-market appeal, we were given an 'insight' into a department store chain seemingly targeting the same old Middle England class nits including a couple looking for camping kit because they were off to Puglia to camp on their own land while their house was being built (I kid you not).
The programme was supposed to show how it has tackled changing tastes, competition and the recession. But on the evidence of this it's done very little, which is probably why profits tanked in the first half of 2009 and why relentlessly upbeat MD Andy Street was forced to admit its model was "too costly".
This week he insisted part two would prove it had taken action. Let's hope so. John Lewis boasts it's never knowingly undersold. It undersold itself here, I fear.
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I've found it much easier to get on with the mass-market proposition it is now even if this week (8pm, BBC1, 10 March) the strapline should have been 'Cooking doesn't get more repetitive than this' (if I see another scallop, black pudding and peas combo, I swear I will start self- harming).
My favourite contestant this week was the deluded fool who dished up plain fish on plain pasta with a plain sauce (what skill!). He didn't last long. Unlike, I hope, mad Terry. He actually made it through to the next stage a few weeks ago, but none of the contestants since have been nearly as entertaining or potentially brilliant in a Marco Pierre White way. Roll on the quarter finals!
If only I could say the same about part two of Inside John Lewis (9pm, BBC2, 10 March). The first part was turgid beyond belief and a wasted opportunity. This was a chance to show that the department store chain (Waitrose was mentioned only in passing) is not the parochial beast many fear it has become. Yet, if anything, it achieved the opposite.
How ironic that just a week after Waitrose announced it was roping in Delia and Heston as brand ambassadors to cement its mass-market appeal, we were given an 'insight' into a department store chain seemingly targeting the same old Middle England class nits including a couple looking for camping kit because they were off to Puglia to camp on their own land while their house was being built (I kid you not).
The programme was supposed to show how it has tackled changing tastes, competition and the recession. But on the evidence of this it's done very little, which is probably why profits tanked in the first half of 2009 and why relentlessly upbeat MD Andy Street was forced to admit its model was "too costly".
This week he insisted part two would prove it had taken action. Let's hope so. John Lewis boasts it's never knowingly undersold. It undersold itself here, I fear.
More from this column
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