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The 5pm blog switched into grumpy old man mood a couple of days back when we received a press release from Latitude festival about the line-up on their Kitchen Stage.

The Suffolk-based festival was keen to promote the fact that Gizzi Erskine had joined chefs such as Jack Stein, Neil Rankin and Carl Clarke at the festival.

Chef demos and cookery classes are promised.

Riffs not rotisserie

The blog has no beef with Gizzi or any of the chefs but what are they doing at a music/arts festival?

Food festivals are easy to understand (Foodies is at Inverleith Park, Edinburgh, 9-13 Aug) and, as the TV schedules hammer home, there is obviously a place for cooking as entertainment.

Equally, there is no reason why festival goers should have to eat poor quality burgers and dull noodles.

In fact, the food at T in the Park this year looks particularly appealing with oysters; wood-fired pizza and Northumberland shish kebabs all making an appearance.

But cooking is not the new rock ‘n’ roll and, as Luke Mcckay points out in this Guardian piece, chefs are not rock stars.

My point is that cooking at a music festival should be in the food court not on the stage.

Iggy pop defies death

Surely you go to a music festival to see Iggy Pop defy death? Not Gizzy Erskine do something clever with eggs.

Cooking is rooted in the domestic. Rock ‘n’ roll should have at least a whiff of the anarchic.

How long before festival fans are faced with the tricky choice of watching either Bloc Party headline the main stage or Mary Berry putting the finishing touches to a darling Pavlova on the Baking Stage?

Grrrrrr. OK, rant over. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.