Seriously, people don't get that Jamie Oliver isn't producing a book for actual poor people, but rather the middle-class-but-go-Lidl-and-tell-people-about-it demographic? If you're living off ready meals and fried ratchicken, I expect you're not in often found browsing the book aisle in Waitrose for Jamie's latest.
Yes. I'm a skint, benefits-dependant but middle-class Aldi fan, and of course I get that I'm his target market.
Except that makes you not his market. The Jamie Oliver brand wants affluent middle-class folk who can pony up the cash for whatever he's selling this week. The admiration or disdain of skint people whatever their class probably isn't much use to him other than as publicity for his latest televisual adventure. And surely as the sun is a big yellow thing that you shouldn't stare at, he'll be wheeled out on telly to flap his mouth whenever he's got something to promote. He is the brand, after all, and it's that brand that sells, otherwise it wouldn't be a Jamie Oliver saucepan, it'd just be a saucepan. Who knows, downstream there maybe money in a JO TV that farts out tasty and nutritious falafel at regular intervals for the delight of the more discerning poor.
Do a lot of poor people eat badly? I expect so. Do they care what Jamie Oliver thinks about their diet? I expect not. I think the only people who get hot and bothered by his opinions are middle-class people. I'm not expecting a line of angst-stricken teens outside the Morley's at the top of my street later, suspended outside the door as they existentially debate 'what would Jamie think?' or 'shall I ask for mange-tout as a side?'. Oh, I know, there's that Loachian view of poverty as being a state of strange austere virtue.
He gets a lot of stick, but he seems like a decent and successful bloke. Sure, it's the British way to knock our successes, we seem to get a odd kick out of it. Of course he's out of touch, he's probably rich enough to get helicoptered to the toilet to dispose of falafelly excess and has a man to polish his aubergines to retina-burning lustre. That's no bad thing. A man who polishes his own aubergines is no man at all. Fuck it, I'm not even going in the kitchen without the support of my robot (JO branded) butler and the full logistical support of the entire Waitrose chain.