Meghan’s new cookery show teaches you how to Photoshop a lentil

The new Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, launches on January 15. But already the fan of the Duchess is raving about some of the astonishing food hacks contained in the lifestyle-promotional televisual plea for absolution and lots, lots more attention. ‘I bought myself a House of Sussex notebook and pen and made copious content notes. And – as Meghan advised - finished each with a heart and smiley, and other emojis, to detract from the imperativeness of the standard cooking advice lexicon.’

Smiling pan-racially at every moment, the Duchess welcomes culinary neophytes into a cutting-edge world of insta-conscious gustatory presentational techniques. And what she has unleashed in sustenential positivity is being talked up in some quarters as full karmic compensation for all those years of Covid. For this is not your average cookery show. It is the full, para-royal inversion of a genre.

In the trailer for the series, Meghan can be seen picking produce from her garden and warmly ignoring her father. Back in her Montecito kitchen, while Harry cleans the oven with a very old toothbrush, Meghan spends the first hour of the show thanking her ‘amazing team’ one by one. Using words such as ‘fantastic’ and (again) ‘amazing’ she says that she is ‘beyond grateful for the support’, leaving viewers pondering how ‘beyond grateful’ might take form in language or emotion.

Then it’s down to business! Lentils, the Duchess explains, don’t look good in most close-up shots, even the red ones that are actually from India. So Ms Markle walks viewers through the process of using image editing techniques to make tasteless brown mush gleam like the diamonds worn by the whore played by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. While the food on the plate looks about as appetizing as Walsall street pizza, the resulting image would make you want to eat the screen through which it fakes.

At which point the show ends, leaving viewers gasping at the ingenuity of the knowhow, the smiliness of the Duchess, and the fantastic, amazing teaminess of the team. But be careful! Despite the Duchess’s heartfelt encomiums for a delicate moderation in all things diet, With Love, Meghan is product you might just want to binge. 

Editor's note: The best interpretation we can make of the term 'beyond grateful' is 'not grateful any more.'

Picture credit: deskpilot

Jamie Oliver pulls children’s book after criticism for stereotyping Mockneys

Jamie Oliver has been sensationally obliged to pull his second book, Geezer and the Oven of Fire, from London bookshelves after a storm of outrage from offended mockneys. The British chef, perennially 27 in his own mind though 49 in chronological age, issued a hastily concocted apology via his publisher, Blindin Books. ‘Mr Oliver sincerely offers his most pukka apologies for any offence taken, nah-mean?’

The humiliating climbdown was forced upon Blindin Books when readers on the outskirts of a true working class London background noticed repeated negative depictions of their type in the storyline . In one chapter, 'Geezer does his nut', Geezer, the eponymous hero, goes into a hangover induced rage because his braised lamb is over-herbed. In another, he calls for central London to be nuked so that all that remains are the outer borough satellite towns that produce authentic mockneys. And in another, he plays down higher education as a waste of time, even though in real life the super chef accepted an honorary degree in dishwashing from Ramsgate College of Let's Get You Through Two More Years of Practical Education to Keep You Off The Govt NEET Stats.

The Geezer series follows the adventures of a young chef from a fictional Essex backwater who leaps to fame when he wins a regional cooking competition in a stained t-shirt. Late for an episode of the 12 minute-episode quick cooking magazine show he is then offered, Geezer accidentally walks through a studio wall, which is an apparent portal into a netherworld of ancient tribes who battle things out in graphic cook-offs. Thus, Geezer lives a double life of popular celebrity in England and culinary warriorship in 'Billericia.'

Geezer attracted controversy in the first book, in which he violently forces his fiancé to drop her aitches, for then giving all his subsequent daughters ‘geezerish’ names: Sam, Billy, and most controversially, Ron. Blur frontman, Damon Albarn, is said to be apoplectic about the depiction of his people. Meanwhile, a source close to Guy Richie says the director is putting about a bit of work said to involve ‘doing Oliver’s knees.’ Elsewhere, Lily Allen was unavailable for comment. Finally, we couldn’t bear the thought of listening to Russell Brand.

Image credit: Wix AI

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