All articles by Liz Hamson – Page 9
-
Comment & OpinionCritical Eye... on Caribbean cuisine and chocolate revolutions
There has been a feast of food-related fare this week on the box. I won't dwell on Come Dine with Me (C4, 8pm, 5 April) - except to say, yes, DJ Wayne was a dim-witted, undeserving winner who shouldn't have harangued Jayne, but the posh,...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on the reincarnation of Gordon Gekko
How cringingly fantastic was The Apprentice this week? (9pm, BBC1, 1 April). Channelling the spirit of the 'greed is good' eighties and the 'thick is better' noughties (thanks, Jade), the hapless candidates were again divided into girls and...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on a very Japanese obsession
We Brits may think we like our food fresh, but it's nothing compared to the Japanese, finds Liz Hamson
-
News
Editor's Comment: The problem is a culture in which heavy drinking is accepted - even expected
What a storm in a pint glass Sir Liam Donaldson's daft proposal to introduce a minimum 50p price per unit for booze has whipped up. Once again, the finger of blame for our 'binge-drinking culture' has been pointed at grocery retailers for selling...
-
News
Unilever united
Unilever UK’s “Drastic” Dave Lewis has further streamlining to do but is also eyeing acquisitions. Liz Hamson met him
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on Paxman waxing lyrical and Blumenthal's feast
What is it with the Victorians this week? We've had Jeremy Paxman waxing lyrical (and surprisingly engagingly) about what the paintings of the era tell us about Victorian society (9pm, BBC1, 1 March). We've had the movie premiere of The Young...
-
News
Critical Eye on... wine. Just wine
I didn't appreciate how risky - or quasi-religious - the world of top-end wine making was until I started watching a new BBC4 series, innovatively entitled Wine. Having discovered in the first of the three-part series how posh London wine...
-
News
Critical Eye... on the Co-op's answer to Heaven's Gate
As fevered anticipation goes, it wasn’t quite up there with the prospect of seeing Javier Bardem strut his stuff in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But I was expecting something special of The Co-operative Group’s new ethical TV ad campaign – especially...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on dodgy Florentine and raw emotion
I was worried the language in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA (9pm, Channel 4, 6 February) would be toned down after the apoplexy in the press following Gordon's Great British Nightmare, in which 312 swear words were used in 103 minutes. The...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... watching the Watchdog
I don’t usually get home in time to watch Watchdog but caught the end of this week’s programme (7.30, BBC1, 2 February) just as it launched into an ‘investigation’ into supermarkets. Not that it was much of an investigation. In a move as...
-
News
Critical Eye... on Huge Furry and Saint Jamie
This week we were 'treated' to a Great British Food Fight double bill as Huge Furry Wittering-balls and Saint Jamie entered the ring to whip up public outrage over the evils of cheap chicken and bacon. I felt a sense of déjà vu as I watched...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on big egos and little chefs
There was loads of must-see TV this week, what with Obama's inauguration speech (and, ahem, the Burnley Tottenham game). But the drama that most grabbed my attention was not the one about remaking America. It was the one about remaking Little Chef.
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on the lightweight treatment of a serious problem
I'm not sure it was a good idea to watch Extreme Slimmers (ITV, 9pm, 13 January) in my plump post-Christmas state, but I figured that instead of making me feel worse about my festive excesses, hearing about people with far weightier weight...
-
News
Critical Eye... on the pointlessness of dotox
January detoxes are so 2008. Who can be bothered? Especially when Wetherspoon has cut the prices of a pint of Greene King IPA and a bottle of San Miguel lager to 99p. But if rubbing shoulders with the local alchies isn't your pint of beer,...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on a flurry of Christmas specials
The annual flurry of festive cookery specials seems to have added resonance this year – perhaps because the renaissance of scratch cooking dovetails with the desire to sit by the warm hearth of nostalgia. Whatever the reason, traditional is back....
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on why top chefs should stick to cooking, not writing
The only thing worse than trying to work out what to buy everyone at Christmas is not having any wonga to buy anything with. Normally I like to give friends fancy cookery books. Not this year. For one, they're too expensive. Under Pressure,...
-
News
The third man
Nick Clegg's views on food policy have firmer foundations than he has been given credit for, Liz Hamson reports
-
News
Critical Eye... on Rhodes around the regions
What a relief. For a while I thought I was going to have to: a) resort to writing about Celebrity Come Dine with Me; b) subject myself to the latest instalment in Neil Morrissey's beer odyssey/idiocy; or worse still, c) write about something...
-
Comment & Opinion
Critical Eye... on men behaving sadly
It's not Ross and Brand but Morrissey and Fox that deserve our moral opprobrium, says Liz Hamson
-
News
Critical Eye... on Mitch, Matt and too many mates
Remember the Peter Kay airport sketch where he’s trying to explain that the bag of white powder in his luggage is Coffee-Mate and the customs officer responds “I’m not your mate”? “He’s not your mate” is what I wanted to scream on Monday...