Following on from yesterday’s mail-out about Foodies at the Festival, one of the event’s more unlikely cookery demos will be the one performed by comedian Stephen K Amos. Stephen is being primed for stardom by the BBC. The corporation are giving him guest appearances on a huge variety of shows so that the public recognise him in advance of an imminent sitcom he is starring in as well as his own show which starts recording in the autumn.
One of his most recent get-to-know-you appearances was on Celebrity Masterchef along with Pete Waterman and Gemma Bissix. It’s fair to say that Stephen did not shine in the Masterchef kitchens not least because at one point he couldn’t tell whether he was cooking chicken or duck.
I interviewed the comic recently and he was realistic about his cooking skills saying that he was ‘not a great cook by any means or even a good one but I can rustle something together’.
The audience at his Foodies demo will be entertained but are unlikely to come away filled with top cooking tips.
‘I’m hoping that they are expecting a comic angle on it because if there is one thing that I am not, it’s the love child of Delia Smith and Ainsley Harriot,’ is Stephen’s take on the demo.
One of his more radical Masterchef dishes was a little invention of his own that combined lettuce and bananas. As if that combo wasn’t racy enough, Stephen decided to pep the dish up by sprinkling cinnamon powder over it. What the cameras didn’t show was that he got his cinnamon mixed up with chilli powder.
‘I thought it was very interesting,’ recalls Stephen. ‘Greg and John said it was awful. I didn’t think of it at the time but I should have come back and said, “This is how we roll in Africa. How dare you?’”
Expect similar hijinks at Foodies Festival.