Great British Menu

(Synopsis)
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/andi-oliver-gbm)
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== Host ==
== Host ==
-
[[Jennie Bond]] (2006-7, voiceover 2008-)
+
[[Jennie Bond]] (2006-7)
-
Ross Kemp (2009)
+
[[Susan Calman]] (2020)
 +
 
 +
Andi Oliver (2020)
 +
 
 +
Voiceover:<br>
 +
Jennie Bond (2008-10)<br>
 +
Mark Bazeley (''Great British Waste Menu'')<br>
 +
Wendy Lloyd (2011-9)<br>
== Co-hosts ==
== Co-hosts ==
-
Judges: Matthew Fort, Prue Leith and Oliver Peyton
+
Judges:<br>
 +
Matthew Fort<br>
 +
Oliver Peyton<br>
 +
[[Prue Leith]] (2006-16)<br>
 +
Andi Oliver (2017-20)<br>
 +
Kerry Godliman (2020-)<br>
 +
Jay Rayner (''Great British Waste Menu'')<br>
 +
Mary Berry (''Great British Budget Menu'')
== Broadcast ==
== Broadcast ==
-
Optomen for BBC Two, 2006 to present  
+
Optomen for BBC Two, 10 April 2006 to present
 +
 
 +
as ''Great British Waste/Budget Menu'': Optomen for BBC One, 25 August 2010 and 11 July 2013
</div>
</div>
 +
== Synopsis ==
== Synopsis ==
Fourteen top chefs compete for the honour of cooking for an illustrious banquet (notably for the Queen's 80th birthday bash in the first series). There are seven regional heats between two chefs, each of which unfolds over five weekday programmes. From Monday to Thursday, the chefs prepare and refine one course each day (starters, fish, mains and desserts) and on Friday, both chefs present their full menu to the judges who choose which will progress to the final public vote. The two chefs in each heat work on opposite sides of the same kitchen, giving them the opportunity to engage in crosstalk as they cook, and there are also filmed inserts going into how the chefs come up with their dishes and source their ingredients (some of which must be regional). Much is made in the first round about how the judges are choosing between the two menus as a whole and as such will want to choose dishes that work well together, but when we get to the public vote in the final week, the menus are broken up anyway which seems to defeat the object.
Fourteen top chefs compete for the honour of cooking for an illustrious banquet (notably for the Queen's 80th birthday bash in the first series). There are seven regional heats between two chefs, each of which unfolds over five weekday programmes. From Monday to Thursday, the chefs prepare and refine one course each day (starters, fish, mains and desserts) and on Friday, both chefs present their full menu to the judges who choose which will progress to the final public vote. The two chefs in each heat work on opposite sides of the same kitchen, giving them the opportunity to engage in crosstalk as they cook, and there are also filmed inserts going into how the chefs come up with their dishes and source their ingredients (some of which must be regional). Much is made in the first round about how the judges are choosing between the two menus as a whole and as such will want to choose dishes that work well together, but when we get to the public vote in the final week, the menus are broken up anyway which seems to defeat the object.
-
<div class="image">[[Image:Great british menu judges.jpg]]''Judges Oliver Peyton, Prue Leith and Matthew Fort deliberate, cogitate and digest.''</div>
+
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu judges.jpg]]''Judges Oliver Peyton, Prue Leith and Matthew Fort deliberate, cogitate and digest.''</div>
-
We can't honestly say it floats our boat, particularly as the only payoff on Monday to Thursday is the chefs tasting each other's dishes, which is a bit limp. This makes these programmes essentially redundant since all the judging is done on Friday.  
+
We can't honestly say it floats our boat, particularly since originally the only payoff on Monday to Thursday was the chefs tasting each other's dishes, which was a bit limp. This made these programmes essentially redundant since all the judging was done on Friday. In the fifth series (why'd it take so long?) this was finally addressed by having three chefs competing in each region, with each day's dishes marked out of ten by a previous regional winner. Only the two highest-scoring chefs across the week now get to cook for the judges on Friday.
-
Nevertheless, it should fill a gap for the foodies missing [[Masterchef Goes Large]].  
+
-
<div class="image">[[Image:Great british menu jennie and chefs.jpg]]''Jennie Bond flanked by series 1 champions Nick Nairn, Marcus Wareing, Bryn Williams and Richard Corrigan''</div>
+
<div class="image">[[File:Greatbritishmenu scoregraphic.jpg|400px]]''A score graphic from the 2011 North West heat, showing Johnnie Mountain, Bruno Birkbeck and Lisa Allen.''</div>
-
The four winning chefs from the first series returned for ''Great British Christmas Menu'' in December 2006. For the second series proper, the seven regional winners from series one returned to face new challengers, with the winners cooking a banquet in France to impress their top chefs. Series three added a perfunctory qualifying phase to proceedings, and culminated with a feast in London's Gherkin for top chefs from around the world, presided over by culinary mad scientist Heston Blumenthal (whose name Jennie Bond had to say in every episode, but never did learn to pronounce correctly). The climax of the fourth series - a banquet for troops returning from Afghanistan - was presented by Ross Kemp. A fifth series has been commissioned for 2010.
+
The four winning chefs from the first series returned for ''Great British Christmas Menu'' in December 2006. For the second series proper, the seven regional winners from series one returned to face new challengers, with the winners cooking a banquet in France to impress their top chefs. Series three added a perfunctory qualifying phase to proceedings, and culminated with a feast in London's Gherkin for top chefs from around the world, presided over by culinary mad scientist Heston Blumenthal (whose name Jennie Bond had to say in every episode, but never did learn to pronounce correctly).  
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu kitchen.jpg|400px]]''Chefs Henry Herbert, Nathan Outlaw (way off in the distance) and John Hooker hard at work in the GBM kitchen''</div>
 +
 
 +
The climax of the fourth series - a banquet for troops returning from Afghanistan - was hosted by Ross Kemp, and menus were expected to adhere to the theme "a taste of home". A theme of sorts was also imposed for the fifth series, in which the chefs were each assigned a National Trust property in their region and asked to source as many of the ingredients as possible within what was imprecisely deemed an "ultra-local" distance of that property. Sometimes ingredients could be sourced from the estates themselves, though the main significance was really to get the National Trust mentioned, as they were organising the final banquet.
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu kerridge moore demetre.jpg|400px]]''Chef Tom Kerridge being assisted by rival Anthony Demetre and home economist Faenia Moore''</div>
 +
 
 +
For 2011, the theme was "food that brings people together" with the chefs having to create sharing platters for a street party. The format is the same as in 2010, except that Jennie Bond is no longer doing the voiceover (it can't have been that great a demand on her time, surely?). 2012 was Olympic-themed, with some vague concept that it was about going further than ever before and the small details that separate winners from losers. It's not entirely clear whether the chefs are still supposed to use ingredients sourced from their own region, but in any case this aspect is no longer given the on-screen emphasis it once was.
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu cheers.jpg|400px]]''Tom Kerridge (right) celebrates winning his regional heat alongside runner-up Anthony Demetre and home economists Sam Head, Emily Shardlow and Phil Wells''</div>
 +
 
 +
2013 saw a Comic Relief theme, with a guest comedian brought in to judge alongside Oliver, Prue and Matthew each week. Each dish receives a mark out of ten from each judge, and (presumably) the chef with the largest total wins. Strangely, the judges are now told which chef has cooked which dish, a change for which there appears to be no good reason at all, though even stranger is the way the opening signature tune no longer actually possesses a tune because they've stuck an old bit of the tension bed over the titles instead. We're sure most viewers don't really care, but it's a bizarre decision. (The actual tune has since been restored, hurrah!)
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Greatbritishmenu judges.jpg|400px]]''Peyton, Leith and Fort''</div>
 +
 
 +
All in all, it's not the flashiest or most inspiring of food shows, but it's hard to knock a programme that's managed to come back year after year and evidently still finds an audience. Best enjoyed with a dictionary at hand.
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great British Menu judges 2019.jpg|400px]]''The current line-up, with Andi Oliver replacing Leith''</div>
 +
 
 +
===''Great British Waste Menu''===
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:British waste menu title.jpg|400px]]</div>
 +
 
 +
Given its emphasis on sourcing food as well as cooking it, ''Great British Menu'' was an obvious format to be pressed into service for a one-off BBC One programme with a social action theme. In a 90-minute special (quite blatantly divided into 22-minute acts, the better to be repeated as four half-hour programmes on commercial channels), four chefs - Matt Tebbutt, [[Simon Rimmer]], Angela Hartnett and Richard Corrigan - were challenged to source waste food from market stalls, shops, restaurants and homes across London and make dishes to be judged in the usual way. The chefs then had to source enough waste ingredients to produce sixty portions for the final banquet, at which the judges named one of them (Corrigan, if you really want to know) as "Rubbish Chef of the Year" and awarded him a brand new dustbin.
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british waste menu corrigan hartnett.jpg|400px]]''Corrigan and Hartnett, not quite incognito''</div>
 +
 
 +
All of this was meant to demonstrate how much perfectly edible food goes to waste, and attempt to persuade supermarkets, producers, restaurants and the like to donate such food to charity rather than throwing it away. Actor Mark Bazeley replaced Jennie Bond on voiceover (an improvement, we reckon) and the show drew its best-ever audience of over five million.
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu waste judges.jpg|400px]]''The judges with added Rayner.''</div>
 +
 
 +
=== Great British Budget Menu ===
 +
 
 +
GBM made another trip over to BBC One for 2013's ''The Cost of Living'' season. Richard Corrigan, Angela Hartnett and James Martin visited people on restricted food budgets and each created a healthy meal on whatever that restricted budget was (£1.12 a meal, say). The ''Great British Menu'' crossover only really happened in the second half, in which each had to produce a main course for £1 a head, to be judged as usual. The special lacked some of the usual hallmarks of the series, in particular Daniel Pemberton's incidental music and any interaction between the chefs, who were given separate mobile kitchens for the banquet (particularly disappointing given what a good pairing Corrigan and Hartnett made on the previous special), making us wonder why they went for ''Great British Menu'' as a vehicle at all, rather than just making a standalone programme. In case you're wondering, the trophy - a wooden spoon, oh how witty - went to Angela Hartnett.
 +
 
 +
== Key moments ==
 +
 
 +
Johnnie Mountain walking out of the 2012 competition after Marcus Wareing awarded him just two out of ten for his fish course "re-creation of the sea".
 +
 
 +
== Catchphrases ==
 +
 
 +
"BUT!" -  Richard Corrigan in particular likes big "BUT!s" and he cannot lie. He's not the only regional judge who likes to start their comments with the good points of a dish, then say this and move on to the negatives, but it's Corrigan who really loves to emphasise it.
 +
 
 +
== Theme music ==
 +
 
 +
Composed by Daniel Pemberton. All the incidental music is based on the same theme - there are over 40 different main arrangements used in the show, with multiple variations on many of them bringing the total number of tracks to over 250.
== Trivia ==
== Trivia ==
-
For some reason, in series 1 poor Jennie Bond was only given one outfit to wear for the whole of the week. Bless. The third series eliminated the wardrobe issue altogether by banishing her to the voiceover booth.
+
For some reason, in series 1 poor Jennie Bond was only given one outfit to wear for the whole of the week. Bless. The third series eliminated the wardrobe issue altogether by banishing her to the voiceover booth; there would not be an on-screen presenter until [[Susan Calman]] took over in 2020.
-
==Theme music ==
+
For the first thirteen series, the show aired five times a week; from 2019, the show went to three times a week, broadcast in the same manner as [[Masterchef Goes Large|Masterchef]], i.e. clearly produced so it ''could'' be shown as half-hour chunks but actually broadcast as two one-hour episodes and a half-hour weekly final.
-
Daniel Pemberton
+
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu jennie and chefs.jpg]]''Jennie Bond flanked by series 1 champions Nick Nairn, Marcus Wareing, Bryn Williams and Richard Corrigan''</div>
 +
 
 +
In the 2010 series, two chefs - Lisa Allen and Tom Kerridge - chose to cook shellfish dishes despite being allergic to shellfish themselves. Both went on to win their regional heats despite not being able to taste the dishes, with Kerridge's crayfish-and-quail scotch eggs being especially praised by the judges for their originality. Both chefs returned in the 2011 series, and both chose to use shellfish again. In 2012, Kerridge acted as the South West's regional judge, but because of his allergy, Jason Atherton was brought in to assist with tasting the fish and main courses.
 +
 
 +
The guest(s) of honour at the end of series banquets were -
 +
 
 +
2006: HRH Queen Elizabeth II (80th Birthday)<br>
 +
2007: The British Ambassador to France<br>
 +
2008: Chefs from around the world, hosted by Heston Blumenthal<br>
 +
2009: British troops returning from Afghanistan<br>
 +
2010: HRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall<br>
 +
2011: "Community food heroes", hosted by Barbara Windsor<br>
 +
2012: British Olympians, hosted by Sir Steve Redgrave<br>
 +
2013: People associated with the Comic Relief charity<br>
 +
2014: 70th Anniversary of D-Day<br>
 +
2015: Centenary of the Women's Institute<br>
 +
2016: "Great Britons" (marking HRH Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday)<br>
 +
2017: 140th Anniversary of Wimbledon<br>
 +
2018: 70th Anniversary of National Health Service<br>
 +
2019: 50th Anniversary of The Beatles recording at Abbey Road Studios<br>
 +
2020: Children's literature
 +
 
 +
The Queen attended the 2006 banquet in her honour, but not the 2016 event.
== Web links ==
== Web links ==
-
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/food BBC Food website]
+
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0071y6r Official site]
 +
 
 +
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Menu Wikipedia entry]
 +
 
 +
== Pictures ==
 +
 
 +
<div class="image">[[File:Great british menu judges long shot.jpg|400px]]''Now <u>that</u>'s what I call a shiny floor show!''</div>
[[Category:Lifestyle]]
[[Category:Lifestyle]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Host Out Of Vision]]
[[Category:Host Out Of Vision]]
 +
[[Category:Long-Running]]
 +
[[Category:Optomen Productions]]
[[Category:Current]]
[[Category:Current]]

Revision as of 17:39, 27 October 2020

File:Great british menu logo.jpg

Contents

Host

Jennie Bond (2006-7)

Susan Calman (2020)

Andi Oliver (2020)

Voiceover:
Jennie Bond (2008-10)
Mark Bazeley (Great British Waste Menu)
Wendy Lloyd (2011-9)

Co-hosts

Judges:
Matthew Fort
Oliver Peyton
Prue Leith (2006-16)
Andi Oliver (2017-20)
Kerry Godliman (2020-)
Jay Rayner (Great British Waste Menu)
Mary Berry (Great British Budget Menu)

Broadcast

Optomen for BBC Two, 10 April 2006 to present

as Great British Waste/Budget Menu: Optomen for BBC One, 25 August 2010 and 11 July 2013

Synopsis

Fourteen top chefs compete for the honour of cooking for an illustrious banquet (notably for the Queen's 80th birthday bash in the first series). There are seven regional heats between two chefs, each of which unfolds over five weekday programmes. From Monday to Thursday, the chefs prepare and refine one course each day (starters, fish, mains and desserts) and on Friday, both chefs present their full menu to the judges who choose which will progress to the final public vote. The two chefs in each heat work on opposite sides of the same kitchen, giving them the opportunity to engage in crosstalk as they cook, and there are also filmed inserts going into how the chefs come up with their dishes and source their ingredients (some of which must be regional). Much is made in the first round about how the judges are choosing between the two menus as a whole and as such will want to choose dishes that work well together, but when we get to the public vote in the final week, the menus are broken up anyway which seems to defeat the object.

File:Great british menu judges.jpgJudges Oliver Peyton, Prue Leith and Matthew Fort deliberate, cogitate and digest.

We can't honestly say it floats our boat, particularly since originally the only payoff on Monday to Thursday was the chefs tasting each other's dishes, which was a bit limp. This made these programmes essentially redundant since all the judging was done on Friday. In the fifth series (why'd it take so long?) this was finally addressed by having three chefs competing in each region, with each day's dishes marked out of ten by a previous regional winner. Only the two highest-scoring chefs across the week now get to cook for the judges on Friday.

A score graphic from the 2011 North West heat, showing Johnnie Mountain, Bruno Birkbeck and Lisa Allen.

The four winning chefs from the first series returned for Great British Christmas Menu in December 2006. For the second series proper, the seven regional winners from series one returned to face new challengers, with the winners cooking a banquet in France to impress their top chefs. Series three added a perfunctory qualifying phase to proceedings, and culminated with a feast in London's Gherkin for top chefs from around the world, presided over by culinary mad scientist Heston Blumenthal (whose name Jennie Bond had to say in every episode, but never did learn to pronounce correctly).

Chefs Henry Herbert, Nathan Outlaw (way off in the distance) and John Hooker hard at work in the GBM kitchen

The climax of the fourth series - a banquet for troops returning from Afghanistan - was hosted by Ross Kemp, and menus were expected to adhere to the theme "a taste of home". A theme of sorts was also imposed for the fifth series, in which the chefs were each assigned a National Trust property in their region and asked to source as many of the ingredients as possible within what was imprecisely deemed an "ultra-local" distance of that property. Sometimes ingredients could be sourced from the estates themselves, though the main significance was really to get the National Trust mentioned, as they were organising the final banquet.

Chef Tom Kerridge being assisted by rival Anthony Demetre and home economist Faenia Moore

For 2011, the theme was "food that brings people together" with the chefs having to create sharing platters for a street party. The format is the same as in 2010, except that Jennie Bond is no longer doing the voiceover (it can't have been that great a demand on her time, surely?). 2012 was Olympic-themed, with some vague concept that it was about going further than ever before and the small details that separate winners from losers. It's not entirely clear whether the chefs are still supposed to use ingredients sourced from their own region, but in any case this aspect is no longer given the on-screen emphasis it once was.

Tom Kerridge (right) celebrates winning his regional heat alongside runner-up Anthony Demetre and home economists Sam Head, Emily Shardlow and Phil Wells

2013 saw a Comic Relief theme, with a guest comedian brought in to judge alongside Oliver, Prue and Matthew each week. Each dish receives a mark out of ten from each judge, and (presumably) the chef with the largest total wins. Strangely, the judges are now told which chef has cooked which dish, a change for which there appears to be no good reason at all, though even stranger is the way the opening signature tune no longer actually possesses a tune because they've stuck an old bit of the tension bed over the titles instead. We're sure most viewers don't really care, but it's a bizarre decision. (The actual tune has since been restored, hurrah!)

Peyton, Leith and Fort

All in all, it's not the flashiest or most inspiring of food shows, but it's hard to knock a programme that's managed to come back year after year and evidently still finds an audience. Best enjoyed with a dictionary at hand.

The current line-up, with Andi Oliver replacing Leith

Great British Waste Menu

Given its emphasis on sourcing food as well as cooking it, Great British Menu was an obvious format to be pressed into service for a one-off BBC One programme with a social action theme. In a 90-minute special (quite blatantly divided into 22-minute acts, the better to be repeated as four half-hour programmes on commercial channels), four chefs - Matt Tebbutt, Simon Rimmer, Angela Hartnett and Richard Corrigan - were challenged to source waste food from market stalls, shops, restaurants and homes across London and make dishes to be judged in the usual way. The chefs then had to source enough waste ingredients to produce sixty portions for the final banquet, at which the judges named one of them (Corrigan, if you really want to know) as "Rubbish Chef of the Year" and awarded him a brand new dustbin.

Corrigan and Hartnett, not quite incognito

All of this was meant to demonstrate how much perfectly edible food goes to waste, and attempt to persuade supermarkets, producers, restaurants and the like to donate such food to charity rather than throwing it away. Actor Mark Bazeley replaced Jennie Bond on voiceover (an improvement, we reckon) and the show drew its best-ever audience of over five million.

The judges with added Rayner.

Great British Budget Menu

GBM made another trip over to BBC One for 2013's The Cost of Living season. Richard Corrigan, Angela Hartnett and James Martin visited people on restricted food budgets and each created a healthy meal on whatever that restricted budget was (£1.12 a meal, say). The Great British Menu crossover only really happened in the second half, in which each had to produce a main course for £1 a head, to be judged as usual. The special lacked some of the usual hallmarks of the series, in particular Daniel Pemberton's incidental music and any interaction between the chefs, who were given separate mobile kitchens for the banquet (particularly disappointing given what a good pairing Corrigan and Hartnett made on the previous special), making us wonder why they went for Great British Menu as a vehicle at all, rather than just making a standalone programme. In case you're wondering, the trophy - a wooden spoon, oh how witty - went to Angela Hartnett.

Key moments

Johnnie Mountain walking out of the 2012 competition after Marcus Wareing awarded him just two out of ten for his fish course "re-creation of the sea".

Catchphrases

"BUT!" - Richard Corrigan in particular likes big "BUT!s" and he cannot lie. He's not the only regional judge who likes to start their comments with the good points of a dish, then say this and move on to the negatives, but it's Corrigan who really loves to emphasise it.

Theme music

Composed by Daniel Pemberton. All the incidental music is based on the same theme - there are over 40 different main arrangements used in the show, with multiple variations on many of them bringing the total number of tracks to over 250.

Trivia

For some reason, in series 1 poor Jennie Bond was only given one outfit to wear for the whole of the week. Bless. The third series eliminated the wardrobe issue altogether by banishing her to the voiceover booth; there would not be an on-screen presenter until Susan Calman took over in 2020.

For the first thirteen series, the show aired five times a week; from 2019, the show went to three times a week, broadcast in the same manner as Masterchef, i.e. clearly produced so it could be shown as half-hour chunks but actually broadcast as two one-hour episodes and a half-hour weekly final.

File:Great british menu jennie and chefs.jpgJennie Bond flanked by series 1 champions Nick Nairn, Marcus Wareing, Bryn Williams and Richard Corrigan

In the 2010 series, two chefs - Lisa Allen and Tom Kerridge - chose to cook shellfish dishes despite being allergic to shellfish themselves. Both went on to win their regional heats despite not being able to taste the dishes, with Kerridge's crayfish-and-quail scotch eggs being especially praised by the judges for their originality. Both chefs returned in the 2011 series, and both chose to use shellfish again. In 2012, Kerridge acted as the South West's regional judge, but because of his allergy, Jason Atherton was brought in to assist with tasting the fish and main courses.

The guest(s) of honour at the end of series banquets were -

2006: HRH Queen Elizabeth II (80th Birthday)
2007: The British Ambassador to France
2008: Chefs from around the world, hosted by Heston Blumenthal
2009: British troops returning from Afghanistan
2010: HRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall
2011: "Community food heroes", hosted by Barbara Windsor
2012: British Olympians, hosted by Sir Steve Redgrave
2013: People associated with the Comic Relief charity
2014: 70th Anniversary of D-Day
2015: Centenary of the Women's Institute
2016: "Great Britons" (marking HRH Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday)
2017: 140th Anniversary of Wimbledon
2018: 70th Anniversary of National Health Service
2019: 50th Anniversary of The Beatles recording at Abbey Road Studios
2020: Children's literature

The Queen attended the 2006 banquet in her honour, but not the 2016 event.

Web links

Official site

Wikipedia entry

Pictures

Now that's what I call a shiny floor show!

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