Name: Jamie Oliver
Age: 38
Appearance: More braising steak than fillet these days.
Are you saying he's got chubbier over the years? Listen, fat is flavour. Just look at that beautiful marbling. Magic!
Whatever. We all know what Jamie Oliver looks like, and we all have our own opinions about him. We do.
To some he's a likeable, hardworking food activist and entrepreneur. To others he's a phoney supermarket salesman who made a fortune out of televised good deeds. Those others are the minority, by the sound of it.
How so? Well, the whole celebrity chef game is about cookbook sales. And the whole cookbook sales game is about Christmas. And Jamie Oliver cookbooks are now as much a part of Christmas as mince pies, family arguments and the Queen on TV.
Says who? Says The Bookseller magazine, in effect. It has done a list of the bestselling cookbooks for the Christmas market and Save with Jamie was not just top, it was miles ahead.
What is he encouraging people to save with him? Leftovers? Bluefin tuna? Neither, or possibly both. It's about how to eat well while looking after your money.
Ah. A subject close to Jamie's heart, some would say. Some would, but presumably not the buyers of the 201,959 copies that have been sold since the book launched in late August. That's nearly twice as many as the second most popular Christmas cookbook, The Great British Bake-Off's Everyday, which has been on sale for a few weeks longer.
Crumbs! Are what those bakers have been left to scavenge from beneath Jamie's table. Very nice. So yes, it is probably safe to say that Save with Jamie is going to be the bestselling cookbook this Christmas. It'll make the bestselling author for the fourth year running, and the sixth in total.
Wicked!… is the sort of thing Jamie is probably shouting in a bath of money. But wait, this is all sounding very familiar. Have you told me this during a Christmas past? What do you mean?
Perhaps in 2011? Oh that Christmas! Yes, well, as I say it does happen every year.
Maybe a Pass Notes about Jamie Oliver's book sales should become another festive tradition? Let's wait and see.
Do say: "These figures from Nielsen Bookscan are well pukka!"
Don't say: "Just drizzle a bit of that over Paul Hollywood from a great height …"
