Just when it seemed that the business tentacles of our sleb chefs could spread no further we discover that the Sainted Jamie is appearing in a vast tented cabaret / musical / performance event in Germany. He's a big star over there - so big that fans were prepared to pay £75 to see him appear for a few seconds as a giant, disembodied, plasma-screen head over the performers below.
It would be cheap and wrong to make jokes about German lack of humour - obviously a few people are giggling all the way to the bank - but from a certain standpoint it shows a serious lack of comedic imagination to stage a musical with songs about glorious food, starring a twinkly cockney urchin called Oliver! and to call it "Das Jamie Oliver Dinner".
Supposedly based on German cookery programmes the show is "part circus, part musical, part panto and part fan convention" which got me thinking about other ways that our slebs could spin of into the realms of live performance.
Delia's hectoring would sound splendid beneath a horned helmet at Bayreuth; Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall should probably be given a top hat and a flute and allowed to caper in front of an audience of thousands of muddy bedenimmed hippies; I somehow imagine 'Baby' James Martin and Ainsley Harriott on a wet October Wednesday sharing an end-of-the-pier show with the Krankies ... but what of Gordo?
How best can we do justice to his profane hugeness, his terrifying gabbling, pop-eyed enthusiasm and strange random hand-slaps? All suggestions welcome.
