The F-Word

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For other uses, see The F-Word (disambiguation).
The F-Word
Format Food magazine/Cooking show
Starring Gordon Ramsay
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 27 (through Series 3)
Production
Running time 44 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel Channel 4
Original run October 27, 2005 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile

The F-Word is a British food magazine and cooking show featuring chef Gordon Ramsay. The programme covers a wide range of topics, from recipes to food preparation and celebrity food fads. The programme is made by Optomen Television and aired weekly on Channel 4.

The theme tune is a 2000 single of the same name by the UK band Babybird.

The first season was filmed at Ladbroke Grove, West London. The second season's restaurant was Deep, located in the Imperial Wharf, south-west London, near the Thames. A third series has aired on Channel 4 and the fourth series begun on May 13th, 2008, and airs on Tuesdays at 9pm.

The show has been broadcast around the world, including in South Korea where it was renamed "Cook-King".[1] and on BBC America in the US.

Contents

[edit] Programme segments

Each episode is based around Ramsay preparing a three-course meal at the F-Word restaurant for 50 guests. Diners in the restaurant include celebrities, who participate in conversations, challenges, and cook-offs with Ramsay. Other segments focus on food-related topics, such as alternative foods and healthy eating.[2] Finally, there is a series-long feature on home-reared livestock or poultry that is ultimately served to F-Word diners on the series finale.

[edit] Series 1

The first series was based around the "Get Women Back in the Kitchen" campaign where Ramsay visited several English households to help women who wanted to improve their culinary skills.[3] The Times' restaurant critic Giles Coren and food writer Rachel Cooke acted as field correspondents who presented reports on unique food fads and healthy eating respectively. Two or three commis (picked from a thousand applicants) squared off in each episode to earn a position at one of Ramsay's restaurants. Ramsay raised turkeys in his garden, so that his children gained a better understanding of where their food came from. Chef and television presenter Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall regularly offered tips on raising free range turkeys. The turkeys were named after other celebrity chefs, for example, Ainsley, Antony and Nigella. The pudding (dessert) challenge regularly pitted Ramsay with a celebrity guest, with the winner having the honour of serving his or her pudding to the guests at the F-Word restaurant.

[edit] Series 2

Ramsay and his amateur brigade plating dessert at the F-Word restaurant
Ramsay and his amateur brigade plating dessert at the F-Word restaurant

The series theme emphasized the importance of Sunday lunch, with Ramsay teaching families how to prepare this meal on a regular basis. From the second series onward, the restaurant had 50 paid diners served by an amateur brigade. If guests found any of their food unsatisfactory, they could choose not to pay for that item.[4] Janet Street-Porter became the series' regular field correspondent; Giles Coren only appeared in a one-off segment on the Pimp That Snack phenomenon. The celebrity pudding challenge was changed to a general cooking challenge, while Ramsay raised pigs in his garden, which he named Trinny and Susannah.[5] Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall returned to offer advice on raising the pigs. Unlike Series 1, the second season of the show was usually transmitted after the 9pm watershed, meaning that Ramsay's infamous bad language was no longer bleeped out.

[edit] Series 3

This series ran a campaign stating that "Fast food doesn't have to mean junk food", with Ramsay showing people how to prepare a simple supper in under 30 minutes.[6] The best weekly amateur brigade was rewarded with the prestige of cooking at Ramsay's restaurant at Claridge's in the series finale.[7] Ramsay home-reared a pair of Charollais-Welsh lambs, nicknamed Charlotte and Gavin. [8] There was also a series-long search for a new "Fanny Cradock".[9]

[edit] Series 4

This series' weekly amateur brigade featured a celebrity and their relatives.[3] Janet Street-Porter took on the responsibility of rearing veal calves in her garden.

[edit] Controversy

[edit] Women in the kitchen

A major component of series 1 was Ramsay's "Get Women Back in the Kitchen" campaign. In a self administered survey he found that three-quarters of women couldn't cook, with some 78% never cooking a regular evening dinner. Women found cooking to be a chore, whereas men found it to be an enjoyable activity. Ramsay claimed that women "know how to mix cocktails but can't cook to save their lives." [10]

Ramsay's findings were met with mixed reactions. While some of his contemporaries, like Nigella Lawson, previously stated similar opinions, other celebrity chefs, like Clarissa Dickson Wright, felt Ramsay's proposition was "rubbish and about ten years out of date". [11] Wright felt that these comments undermined the increased enrollment of women at culinary schools across the United Kingdom. His intentions have been misunderstood by some who believe that he thinks women belong in the kitchen or should be doing the cooking for their husbands, whereas his real desire is to help women who want to be able to cook but lack the confidence or motivation.

[edit] Animal slaughter

The penultimate episode of the first series featured the slaughter of six turkeys that were raised in Ramsay's garden. The scene had been preceded with a content warning. 27 viewers complained about the slaughter, leading to an investigation by Ofcom. Conversely, the media watchdog and Channel 4 also received 18 letters of support to counter the complaints. In 2004, Ramsay had also been criticised by the broadcast watchdog for swearing on-air. In the second series, viewers also saw the slaughter of his two pigs, where their brains were stunned with an electric shock, before being slaughtered.[12]

A few months earlier, another Channel 4 series, Jamie's Great Italian Escape (featuring Jamie Oliver) also received similar complaints after it featured the slaughter of a lamb.

In the same vein, the end of series two saw the pigs that were raised throughout the series, taken to an abattoir and slaughtered, as were the lambs he kept at the end of series three. Warnings were given to viewers before the start of the programme explaining the graphic nature of the footage, there was no censoring of the death or evisceration of the animal.

Also, during the 3rd series, Charlotte, whilst being raised at Beckingham Palace was mysteriously slaughtered. After the same episode, the viewers were urged to phone in if they had sussed out the Cluedo-esque slaughtering. Further into the series, they thought it was a sort of fox or wolf.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cook-King Ramsay(Promo page)(Korean), Dong-ah TV, Retrieved on August 3, 2007
  2. ^ "Grilling Gordon Ramsay". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  3. ^ a b "The Real Gordon Ramsay". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  4. ^ "The Brigades". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  5. ^ "Pork for thought". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  6. ^ "Fast Food Recipes". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  7. ^ "The F Word Brigades - Series 3". Channel 4. Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  8. ^ "Welsh lambs to star in Gordon Ramsay's F Word". Farmers Guardian (22 May 2007). Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  9. ^ "Find me a Fanny". Channel 4 (6 September, 2007). Retrieved on 13 May 2008.
  10. ^ Ramsay: Women can't cook to save their lives | the Daily Mail
  11. ^ News - Telegraph
  12. ^ Ramsay reduced to tears as pigs go under knife - Media, News - Independent.co.uk

[edit] External links