At the beginning of Master Chef we see one of the presenters Gregg Wallace proudly boast, “cooking doesn’t get any tougher than this”!  Well after watching a full episode of his new programme last Thursday called Eat Well For Less, his new catchphrase should now be “WATCHING THIS SHOW DOESN’T GET ANY TOUGHER THAN THIS”! It was an hour of my life I will sadly never get back. It food terms it was absolute TRIPE……..TRIPE, TRIPE, TRIPE AND EVEN MORE TRIPE(and I’m vegetarian too)!

Starring Gregg Wallace and fellow green grocer Chris Bavin(who?), the premise of this show is for them to help families lower the costs of their weekly food shops. This episode featured a young family from Maidstone, Kent, called The Stantons(Mum, Dad and their two young daughters).  Now as soon as I heard the Dad(Dan) speak with an awful Essex twang as he strolled around the supermarket like a peacock in what looked like black leotard type leggings, then I’ll be honest and say that I was frowning before the show had barely begun.

Whilst in this first segment of them doing their weekly shop, we then had this ridiculous football style commentary on how they were doing their shopping by Gregg and Chris(undercover of course).  We had Gregg saying profound things like, “if you come in the shop without a list then you are gonna buy more than you need”. That Greg my old son is genius……..or more like just plain bloody sense, gee whiz. They were aided in their analysis by Liza Tarbuck on voice over, who was just as equally exasperating.  I like Liza Tarbuck but via her delivery and what she was saying, it was like she was talking to a group of simple five year olds watching the show.  Then came the crunch at the end of the shop. On this one shop alone(the Stantons did several during the week apparently) they spent a staggering ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX POUNDS, NINETY-SIX PENCE.  What on earth were they buying, GOLD APPLES AND ORANGES for crying out loud???

The rest of the show was then genius, genius in how they managed to fill up the next fifty or so minutes with bland patronizing waffle. Some of the foods the Stantons regular ate were swapped with cheaper brands but the labels were covered up so they could not tell not the difference straight away, if at all .  There was this ridiculous bit where Zoe(Mum) proudly proclaimed to be the ‘baked bean Queen’. She was so sure she would be able to tell the taste of inferior baked beans, but she couldn’t as we duly found out.  Zoe couldn’t stop laughing about this whereas I found it was about as funny to watch as having a large dose of the windy poos through eating too many beans.   They were then advised about how they should waste less food by refreezing stuff, buy more frozen stuff over fresh and how they should encourage their kids to eat more varied foods.

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh here but SURELY IT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE IN KNOWING HOW TO REDUCE YOUR WEEKLY FOODS COSTS IS IT? Did they or even we as a nation, really need this irritating pair of cheeky chappy green grocers to tell us how to do this? I don’t think we did, I felt the show treated us like simple morons.   How did a family who were obviously fairly well off not have a clue how to cut costs, I was staggered? Oh and what was the greatest lesson taught by the end the show to Zoe and Dan by Gregg and Chris……..THAT THEY SHOULD WRITE AND TAKE SHOPPING LIST WITH THEM FROM NOW ON!!! I think I just sat there shaking my head in disbelief. I had watched this show for the best part of an hour now and ‘take a shopping list with you’ was the best bit of advice they were given….and they say TV is dumbing down, HOLY MACKEREL is it!!!

Oh and I must share with you my cringe highlight of the entire show.  It was when Gregg and Chris were driving back to the Stantons house to find out if they liked some of the cheaper brands of food that they’d given them to try. Chris was really giving it the big sell but over acting his part massively I’m afraid. I swear he would have wet himself had Gregg driven quickly over a speed pump,  such was the extent of his nervous anticipation at finding out the results.  Whereas I’m sat there watching this thinking to myself, ‘WHO GIVES A ALDI FIG ROLL WHAT FOODS THEY PREFERRED’.  It was TV GOLD but sadly in a bad way.

The credits were rolling and then I heard something else bewildering.  The voice-over guy was requesting people who wanted to be on the next series to send their details in.  Nooooooooooooooooooo. This means there is going to be even more of this tripe to come soon.  I’M FULLY TRIPED OUT ENOUGH AS IT IS THOUGH BBC, PLEASE DON’T DISH ME UP ANY MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not for me 1/5.