It will be 20 years next year since an ambitious youngster from Essex called Jamie Oliver burst onto our TV screens in The Naked Chef.
For more than half that time, Oliver was the face of Sainsbury’s, thanks to a lucrative advertising link-up reported to have earned him more than £1m a year.
So having just had to sink £12m of his own money into saving his Jamie’s Italian restaurant empire, there will be cynics who point to a very obvious reason why Oliver has agreed to be the face of a new supermarket campaign – the ‘pukka’ sum for heading up a new health initiative for the biggest beast of all, Tesco.
But it’s not about the money, Oliver insists. And at the launch of today’s partnership, both Oliver and Tesco boss Dave Lewis also insisted Jamie is not the new face of Tesco. Indeed it’s not even an ad campaign. It’s a health initiative.
Whilst it’s advisable to take this with a pinch of salt (not too much, of course), the two seemingly unlikely partners did make a convincing case at today’s event (at Jamie’s cookery school in Shepherd’s Bush), as to how they hope to take the fight against obesity to the front line of the shop floor, making healthier food cheaper and inspiring time-pressed, kitchen-knowledge-poor Brits to pick up a pan and start cooking from scratch.
If Oliver can transfer just a handful of the magic dust he brings to his TV shows and bestselling cookery books – and, it has to be admitted, he even managed to put a motley crew of journalists through their culinary paces at today’s launch – to Tesco’s shelves, the venture might just make a difference.
As for Tesco, there is no doubt, as Oliver says, it has been the most proactive supermarket in pushing the health agenda in the past few years.
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From its crackdown on sugar in the soft drinks aisle to free fruit for kids and its ambitious tie-ups with Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation, the UK’s biggest retailer has, to use its own oft-repeated line, offered more than a little help in encouraging customers to cook and eat healthier food. (Even if it’s not averse to flogging its fair share of junk.)
What its campaign has lacked, Lewis admitted today, is an inspirational figure who connects with its shoppers to get the message across that it really means business on health.
But it’s a curious deal. And not only because Oliver is associated with Sainsbury’s.
On the one hand, Jamie is celebrity chef royalty. On the other hand, he’s not as popular as he once was. He’s a middle-aged mockney multimillionaire, and quite a lot of punters are now put off by his hectoring and preaching.
Nor will the industry relish Tesco teaming up with Jamie. If you’re one of those many suppliers infuriated by the hypocrisy of a comfort food-loving celebrity chef jumping on the anti-obesity bandwagon; if his bizarre victory dance at Westminster, having arrived on his moped to celebrate the birth of the sugar tax, is seared into your brain; you will probably want to throw up at the sight of Jamie’s Veggie Noodle Stir Fry, Fish Finger Sarnie, Mighty Mushroom & Kale Frittata and Veggie Quesadilla Bake, the first in a whole production line of recipes he has in store for Tesco customers.
Perhaps for Lewis it was the glamour of sharing the stove with The Naked Chef, but the question worth considering is: what would you prefer?
The UK’s most influential supermarket and its most influential chef pushing a health agenda with a focus on taste, in the hope others will follow, or the flip-flopping, half-baked public health policies of the Department of Health. As much as the message of Tesco-Jamie is a little confused, it’s easier to fathom than the latest government health guidelines anyway.
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