Sunday 4 October 2009

Jamie eats sheep’s penis


This lurid and rather distasteful headline caught my attention in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Apparently, poor old Jamie Oliver had to put an animal’s private parts in his mouth and then eat it! Frankly, I had no idea that the poor chap was in the same hospital as me. In fact, I didn’t even know he was ill. The last I knew he was boring Americans to death travelling around the USA in his gas-guzzling (but carbon-neutral) camper van.

However, after a little further investigation I discovered that the sheep’s penis devoured by the nation’s favourite mockney chef was in fact a delicacy offered up to him during a visit he made to a native American reservation as part of his TV series. I just wonder if the tribe had a meeting of the elders prior to his arrival in order to discuss what to feed their honoured guest…

“Big heap English cook is coming to visit? What will we give him to eat?” asks the chief. “Should be food we eat,” he adds.

“Then we make him hamburger,” someone chimes in.

“Buffalo steak,” adds another.

Eventually the joker of the pack pipes up and says: “Let’s give him sheep penis for a laugh. See if big chef can eat it.”

And that’s probably how the whole thing came about. One of the visitors in my room while I was reading the story out aloud wanted to know how Jamie knew it was a sheep’s penis and not some other delicacy.

“I suppose it takes one to know one!” my other visitor helpfully chipped in.

Well it seems that Jamie quite enjoyed his chew on a sheep’s most intimate part and wouldn’t rule out eating one again. Not for a moment did I suspect that this whole story might have been dreamt up to get headlines for poor old Jamie’s TV show that appears to be struggling somewhat. No one would do a calculated thing like that just for publicity, would they?

Mind you, all this talk of Jamie eating odd things has quite put me off going to one of his restaurants. There’s one in my hometown and I went there once but I didn’t see Jamie doing the cooking. Perhaps it was his night off. But then I noticed that there are Jamie restaurants in other towns too. How on earth does the man manage to do all that cooking at the same time? Is he some sort of holy trinity? Do you think he makes the food in batches and then freezes it before moving on to the next restaurant?

Perhaps he has a special factory where all the food is produced in big vats before being chilled and sent to the restaurants and then reheated before being served up to the diners? If that’s the case then he’s definitely not the man to sort out hospital food because that’s what they do already.

Anyway, I think I’m going to have the hotpot for my lunch today. For some reason I just don’t fancy the toad in the hole.

17 comments:

  1. TM sweetie,
    go on,
    live dangerously.... ;0)
    Mind you knowing what the previous "sausage" offering looked like I'd probably stick to the hotpot too.
    Be interesting to see if there is actually any "meat" in it ;0)
    Regards Jax x

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  2. Shouldn't Spotted Dick have custard with it?

    Poor Jamie!

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  3. Hope your "chefs" didn't read that article too...

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  4. Just a note to remind a journalist how sick American First Nation people are of the old stereotype.

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  5. Wonder if they gave him a Native name."Dances with sheep"."Munches the penis".

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  6. No stereotyping intended. I'm fully aware of what life on reservations is like. This was merely fun. I'd like to think our First Nation friends would see the funny side.

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  7. PMSL

    When I saw the title of the blog I assumed likewise, that he had recently been an inmate of the hospital you are in.

    I suspect the Native Americans ran a poll on facebook to see what they could come up with. Good job ! :)

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  8. I've been to a number of Native American festivities and this "delicacy"is a new one to me. Good to see a tribe with a sense of humor.Now...if it had been a prairie oyster....

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  9. I'd love to know what you would all like to feed Jamie given the opportunity. My vote is for slugs flambéed in apple brandy with a side order of roast hedgehog and smoked skunk.

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  10. A friend of mine worked in the Dept.of Northern affairs in Canada.He traveled in the north negotiating treaties with the Inuit.At the end of one very long session an agreement was signed. One of the Inuit present said that a celebration was in order,lets "dig up the walrus"! My friend assumed it was a quaint way of saying "lets party"! To my friends astonishment a group of Inuit went outside and proceeded to dig up a walrus that had been buried some months earlier.It was explained that given time,the microbes in the ground work their magic and ,hey presto!,a delicacy is born. He described a stinking,green,mass of semi-decayed meat,that he swore would invoke a gag response in a buzzard. I'd pay to see a "mockney" chef try to get a cracker full of that down his face.

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  11. They do something similar in Iceland. They bury a shark in sand once the men of the village have pee'd liberally over it and then leave it for six months. Don't think you'd find that in Sainsburys!

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  12. Many years ago my dad used to do a good old fry up, bacon, egg, tomato, fried bread, sausage, beans and sweetbreads, (sheep testicles), the sweetbreads would be soaked in milk for an hour or so, washed and fried slowly.... Feast for a king.

    I suppose Jamie Oliver has tried most disgusting stuff there is to be tried, I would like him to try the really disgusting stuff they eat here in Crete, raw sea anenomie, catch one off a rock, open the core, take a teaspoon and dig out the orange part, still alive and squirming, I would rather eat the food you are served TM..

    Keep happy mate and thank you so much for the laughs you give us all, just wish i could return the favour as i am terribly home sick.

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  13. Homesickness is so tough, even if you're somewhere really beautiful. When I lived abroad I missed British humour, decent tea, poached eggs on toast, Cheddar cheese and heaps of other things. Mind you, as soon as you come home you'd start missing all those things you've got used to in Crete. Life's a funny old thing. At least it's easier to keep in touch with home now we have the Internet. Chin up. TM

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  14. I found "manky walrus surprise"in the frozen food section at Sainsburys.

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  15. TM, you've probably been eating sheep's willies for a while now. They are on the hospital menu, and are called sausages.

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  16. Keep up the courage TM!

    for the other readers, just a couple of revolutionary thoughts -

    About eating meat. Sorry to bore you all with this but it is really the most important question of the century.

    Apart from disgusting, I think that eating whatever part of an animal is wrong. Disgusting is not the issue. Not killing animals is the real serious issue we should all look in the face.

    Another different thing: if someone offers something disgusting just to test you, don't eat it.

    We should never give way to tyranny anywhere!

    Not to NHS food tyranny either.

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  17. Well, a breadcrumbed and fried dick without custard and maybe even without spots, who'd have thought it. It seems it's sometimes time for a change in one moment or another. This is how evolution works - if it doesn't succeed it'll die out. Hopefully evolution of NHS cooking arts will speed up a bit before NHS patients go extinct.

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