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22nd May 2019

Ainsley Harriott is in talks to bring back Ready Steady Cook

Kyle Picknell

A battle as old as time itself: good versus evil, light versus darkness, the green peppers versus the red tomatoes

Let me ask you: remember Ainsley Harriott?

The TV chef who turned ‘just grinning a lot and rubbing his hands together’ into an art form? Yeah? Really, really into drizzling olive oil? Like a bit too into it? Remember him? Ok, good.

Now, let me ask you: remember Ready Steady Cook?

The TV cooking show that saw the green peppers go up against the red tomatoes in a game of… cooking.

One which is made up of two teams, each with one celebrity chef and one idiot plucked off the street who can’t cook, like at all, who is always saying things like “please can you remind me, Anthony Worrall Thompson, how exactly is it that you boil rice?”, whilst Ainsley Harriott just sort of flits between them, grinning and rubbing his hands together and sticking his big wooden spoon into their pots at the most inconvenient time so he can slurp down whatever they are making and emit a loud, satisfied noise that can only, ONLY, be described as ‘overtly sexual’.

Also, the green peppers always win. It’s like the first 100 years or so of the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry once Babe Ruth was traded. Only bigger. And more important.

Anyway, now that I have refreshed your memory, let me inform you that Big Ainz is looking to bring the show back with resident chef James Martin.

It’s been ten years since the programme last aired on BBC2 but the duo are in talks for a revival of Ready Steady, quite possibly the greatest cooking show of all time.

Harriott said: “Me and James have been discussing it recently, he is at the forefront of the production side of things, and he is saying that people are talking about it.

“Fingers crossed they go for it. It’s a unique format and there’s nothing else on TV quite like it  – it’s so easy for people to follow. Me and James would do it, along with a raft of new chefs.”

Here’s a full episode that you will get away with watching in its entirety at work if you politely, but firmly, explain to your boss that it is for ‘research purposes’.

If they ask you to elaborate further simply hold a single finger up to them instructing them to pause, put your earphones back in, and ignore them until they leave you alone.