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not always knowing exactly where you're
going.' Implicit in this is that the business of
food, of harvesting and cooking and shared
meals, provides signifi ers of the continuity and
the bonds of 'real' family life, and throughout a
series ostensibly about the raw and the cooked,
the widely reported instabilities of Oliver's own
marriage will disrupt the narrative and func-
tion intertextually as a counterpoint to his
encounter with older certainties signifi ed by
older tastes.
Oliver is a celebrity. Celebrities, Rojek
(2001, p. 51ff) argues, are elevated above their
public, have quasi-religious powers.
15
Jamie
discovers that Italian culinary attitudes are ultra-
conservative, fi rmly rooted within the region,
and hostile to embracing the recipes of neigh-
bours. Thus, whatever his claims to be in Italy to
learn from the older ways, to be their celebrant,
he sets out instead to re-educate the palates of
others. In a narrative of overcoming adversity,
he uses ingredients and recipes as his weapons
in his crusade to win the approval of the locals
and bestow on them the enlightenment of
Jamie's 'new' authentic Italian cooking. Whether
in a working-class market in Palermo,
16
where
he overcomes the locals' distaste for adding fl a-
vourings of orange and rosemary to freshly
grilled fi sh, or in a farm in The Marches,
17
where
he insists on stuffi ng the local lamb with a neigh-
bouring Tuscan mix of rosemary and pine nuts
and wins approval from his hunter hosts even
although he has failed to respect the traditions
of the region, Jamie complains about the dead
hand of whichever granny or
nonna
rules the
kitchen and attempts to inhibit his creativity.
Heldke (2005, p. 388) argues that 'there is no
such thing as a cuisine untouched by “outside
infl uences”' and that what we identify as
authentic is often simply what is new to us, and
it may be that Oliver, or his producer, is being
disingenuous in talking up his narratively con-
venient critical encounters with the grannies.
18
There is, however, a rare getting of wisdom
when Oliver has to come to terms with the logic
of his pursuit of the freshest of produce, and lov-
ing close-ups of lemons all knobbly and unwaxed
on a tree high above the sea, of purple artichokes
in a Palermo market, of heady clumps of basil in
a monastery garden are replaced by the fl ash of
a slaughterman's knife and blood. These uncom-
fortable signifi ers of 'real' food accompany Oli-
ver's own 'blooding' as his hosts, hunters in the
muddy, misty wildness of an Italy little visited,
invite him to kill a lamb for their feast. 'I'm quite
interested while I'm in Le Marche to get to grips
with the whole hunting wild food, you know,
sustainable living and all that sort of business,
living off the land. Something that in England in
a normal sense has disappeared, you know.'
Standing in a fi eld, Jamie looks off-camera. 'No
I don't know if I can kill a lamb. I've never done
that before.' He looks around and hesitates. 'I
mean . . . I, I . . . well not with a knife anyway.'
There is a shot of men trussing a live sheep,
while he looks on before joining them to bind its
front feet. There is a cut to his host Massimo and
Jamie carrying it out by the feet and in voice
over Jamie adds, 'It's not quite like Sainsbury's
19
is it? I don't know what to do.' The camera tracks
behind them as they carry it down the fi eld.
There is a shot of the sheep on grass, its neck in
the centre of the frame, then a close-up of a knife
in someone's hand. Jamie and Massimo are with
the sheep. 'It's fi rst time? Si,' Massimo asks, then
indicates the spot and puts Jamie's hand to it.
There is a close-up of Jamie blinking. 'Un
momento,' he half laughs, half cries. Massimo's
hand cuffs him gently. There is a close-up of the
sheep, with Massimo's hand on it, then a shot of
15
See Horton and Wohl (1956) on the complexity of the audience's relationship with media performers, and
also Langer (1981).
16
Jamie's Great Italian Escape
, Episode 1 (October 2005).
17
Jamie's Great Italian Escape
, Episode 4 (November 2005).
18
See also Sutton (2001, pp. 144ff) who identifi es a myth of 'harmonious community' apparent in much cur-
rent cookery writing which idealizes tradition and articulates it in recipes which become culinary memoirs,
and Barthes (1997, p. 24), who argues that French food permitted a daily communion with a national and
unchanging past.
19
The intertextuality of this would not have gone unnoticed by viewers familiar with Oliver's role in promoting
premium food lines for that supermarket.
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