Boxing Clever: Mulled-wine glazed ham with 'cheeky' glazed cheese is very Jamie Oliver
Jamie: Keep Cooking At Christmas. Photograph: Paul Stuart
(Channel 4, Sunday 8pm and All 4) feels a little odd from the get go. There’s something not quite right — as if it’s running at three-quarter speed. And then it occurs to me. Jamie Oliver is getting old. And if Jamie is getting old, so am I. That’s not going to put me in the Christmas spirit.
The geezer on the scooter with the cool girlfriend is now Dad in a too-small shirt , with five kids to feed. The machine-gun delivery is toned down — as if he’s worried that he might wake the youngest one. I don’t like this at all.
And then I do. It’s almost like he knew he was laboured at the start, so he gives it a bit more Jamie after five minutes, and suddenly we’re back on track.
A mulled-wine glazed ham with a cheeky glazed cheese on the side is very him . He doesn’t season something, he ‘fragrances the water’ with rosemary and thyme. It’s a Jamie Oliver recipe so there has to be a chilli, this one ‘adds to the glow’ of the whole thing.
He’s not in the massive rush of his early years, but Jamie cooking in a softly-lit kitchen with a bit of tinsel in the shot and it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. ( I ate half a tin of Celebrations watching the bit where he made a Yule Log with Chocolate Sauce. )
He served it to his parents (outside) and his Dad made a face suggesting he’d rather be somewhere other than on a Christmas special with his world-famous son. Disapproving Dad also felt a lot like Christmas.
My favourite bit was the turkey cooked ‘2 ways’ which involved apricot stuffing, rolled breast, stuffed legs and chestnut gravy. But mainly it would have involved starting your Christmas dinner on December 1 in order to get it done on time. There will be people out there who try this on Christmas Day, and I, for one, feel sorry for them.
But that’s the beauty of Jamie at Christmas time. You sit back with a tub of Celebrations and watch him do all the work, you say 'I must try that myself this year' and then forget about it and cook what you’ve always cooked. The point of Jamie is to get you in the mood with his fantasy life and huge kitchen with no washing-up. And, of course, the other point is to remind you that time is moving on.
Don’t worry if you start feeling too happy in the run-up to Christmas — you could always watch on Netflix. It’s a Russian drama about a group of people on the run from a killer pandemic. And no, they didn’t rush it out, this was released last year. The characters are big and bold and awful in a way that suggests they’re not exactly bothered with the whole woke revolution over in Russia. Two episodes in and we’re hooked to it in our house. Give it a look yourself.
