][1]It’s no surprise that when you read those who-would-come-to-your-perfect-dinner-party pieces in the Sunday supplements that Michael Winner’s name rarely crops up. Rude, pompous and the star of the world’s most annoying TV commercial, most people would rather commit hari kari with the dessert spoon then listen to Winner windbag on and on.
However, as those clever people at ITV1 know, there is a lot of money to be made from being annoying. His ‘Calm down dear’ ads for Esure may be intensely irritating but, according to research, they are the most effective ads that the company has ever run in terms of prompting recall of the Esure name.
ITV will be hoping for a similar reaction tonight when it broadcasts the first epsiode in a new series called Michael Winner’s Dining Stars. In it, the Sunday Times restaurant critic goes to the houses of everyday people who, it seems, will stop at nothing to get on the telly. These people cook for Winner who is then extremely rude about them and their food.
In tonight’s episode, Winner goes to Lancashire. Obviously, he is suspsicious of anywhere north of the Watford Gap.
According to Winner: “The north is not a place I frequently go to, it is an alien country, it is another land, but it is beautiful. The people are nice, the people are very nice, but they provide food that is absolutely pathetic and they are incapable of cooking, so, I must say, where I am going does not totally thrill me.”
After lambasting the cooking skills of several households, Winner then picks one to come and cook a meal for him and his celebrity friends. One imagines that there might be a run on ground glass and cyanide.
STV has opted out of showing the programme but Scottish viewers should be able to get it on the ITVplayer. Just try not to kick your computer screen in.