Why Isn’t Your Stupid Family Like This? began this week on RTÉ. RTÉ claims that the name of the show is actually Donal Skehan: Home Cook (Wednesday, RTÉ One), but you can tell what it’s really called. It’s difficult to watch Donal Skehan’s adorable, well-behaved children capably using chopsticks without considering the children you know, sitting there with dazed expressions on their faces as they stuff fistfuls of mashed potato into their maws with their bare hands. And some of the children you know are doing the Junior Cert. One of them is in his 40s (my brother).
The premise behind Donal Skehan: Home Cook is that Skehan’s family are busy and on-the-go but they still need nutrients and for some reason firing Haribo supermix into them isn’t good enough. No, Skehan must cook chicken satay and prawn pasta and noodle ramen. Well la-di-da. I was unaware of your connection to the king of England, Donal Skehan.
At the outset, Skehan entertains the notion of cooking “against a backdrop of family chaos” but then we get footage of his angelic offspring, one of whom is playfully taking a bite out of a bell pepper, so we know he’s just mocking us. None of his children have the slack-jawed, sociopathic glares of the children you’re more familiar with, who can most typically be found screaming for food while smashing beloved family heirlooms and covered in jam.
Furthermore, his cooking style has none of the hallmarks of family cooking that I’ve encountered. Where are the burning pots? Where is the yelling? Why isn’t there food all over the pristine white walls? Why isn’t Donal Skehan swigging from a jug of wine? Shouldn’t that delightful, obedient dog be on fire occasionally? (Note to self: pitch a cookery programme in which there are a lot of arguments and possibly a divorce).
Culchiecore, bonkbusters, murder, more murder and Nationwide: What I’ve seen on TV in 2024
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
Letters to the Editor, December 14th: On the Green effect, grief and the humble Brussels sprout
Wake up, people: Here’s what the mainstream media don’t want you to know about Christmas
Skehan is a very likable man whose Tintin-style hair, though flecked with grey, I want to ruffle while saying: ‘Ah young sonny my lad, here’s a shiny penny. Purchase for yourself a hoop and a stick’
This is not “chaos”, Donal Skehan. What you’re showing me is a family in a gentle hurry. Oh, I could show you chaos. There are unnerving 11-year-olds I could introduce you to whose very presence would drag you into a deep Lovecraftian abyss. Chaos? I scoff at your “chaos”. I know a child whose Halloween costume was his own clothes. And the neighbours felt that this was appropriately terrifying so didn’t even mention it.
Yes, before I’m finished with you, Skehan, you will be cowering in a corner muttering “I didn’t know! I didn’t know!” while fearing for the future of the human race like the rest of us. His next programme will be called I Live in the Attic Now with Donal Skehan, and it will just be a dark screen and the sound of weeping and it will be as long as Live Aid.
[ Majken Bech Bailey’s pork chops in tomato cream sauceOpens in new window ]
[ Roasted pumpkin stuffed with orzo and blue cheeseOpens in new window ]
With that in mind, let’s review the show. Skehan is still a very likable man whose Tintin-style hair, though flecked with grey, I want to ruffle while saying: “Ah young sonny my lad, here’s a shiny penny. Purchase for yourself a hoop and a stick.” But I’ve just googled him and he’s 37. He doesn’t have the slightly food-drunk demeanour of older chefs who approach food sensuously as though preparing to make sweet love to it.
Skehan’s food style is a kind of action cookery. He cooks food at speed, chopping and splicing flora and fauna while doing the occasional forward roll. He’s no snob. He does not shun modern gizmos such as rice cookers and even uses premade curry sauces and instant noodles in his recipe, which just goes to show that he’s a regular guy like you, except with better children. These angelic beings turn up being adorable between meals.
Not to labour the point, but they will definitely care for him in his dotage and not leave him in the forest to die like the children we know are probably going to do with us.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s enjoyable watching Donal Skehan, a nice man, preparing good food for clean children in an ordered household devoid of stains. I think for many people it’s probably like watching science fiction. It’s only towards the end of the programme that it occurs to me that Donal has just prepared then munched on four dinners while wearing the same outfit – a chambray shirt open over a peach t-shirt. This either means he has stress eaten four dinners in a row or, alternatively, he hasn’t changed his clothes in four days. Ah, the “chaos” is coming into focus now.
[ Mary Berry’s Ireland visit: here’s what she did and what she cookedOpens in new window ]
Donal Skehan: Home Cook appears in a sort of double bill every Wednesday with How to Cook Well with Rory O’Connell (RTÉ One), a title that cleverly implies that other shows teach people how to cook badly. And why not? Rory can do as he pleases. He is a no-nonsense instructor who would never dream of using instant noodles, preferring instead to use the spoils of his garden, which unlike your garden has flowers and herbs growing in it, not rusty bikes and lost children. He also shows you how to make three courses for one fancy meal in contrast to Donal “Four Dinners” Skehan who did, in the end, delight me with his tasteful gluttony. O’Connell has a nice turn of phrase. “Am I getting too lyrical perhaps, about a grapefruit?” he says, in a rare moment of doubt, to which I say: “You can’t be too lyrical about a grapefruit Rory O’Connell. Keep being lyrical about grapefruit.”
Mel frequently refers to Mary Berry as ‘Bez’, presumably a reference to her time as the maraca player with the Happy Mondays (it’s possible that this is a different Bez)
The premise of Mary Berry’s show, Mary Makes it Easy (Thursday, BBC2), is that she will show a host of “familiar faces” how to improve their skills in the kitchen. And so, in the first episode Mary contends with the tomfoolery of her former Bake Off colleague Mel Giedroyc, as she makes delicious food at a campsite on the edge of a river. It’s pretty clear that Mel has kidnapped her.
Luckily, Mary is as stoically good natured as ever, always accompanied by a jaunty string section both metaphorically and literally. It’s very relaxing to be around her. Mel thinks so too. “Oh Mary, you’re an angel sent from heaven,” she says, accurately. Mel also frequently refers to Mary as “Bez”, presumably a reference to her time as the maraca player with the Happy Mondays (it’s possible that this is a different Bez). The food she prepares for her captor all looks tastily straightforward.
There is, most notably, a mushroom soup that includes an ingredient that you might expect in a mushroom soup – mushrooms – but also, a “secret ingredient”. It’s probably “people” which is the secret ingredient from another cookery-based entertainment I enjoy, Soylent Green. It turns out to be “soy sauce”, which means I was close enough.
