Jamie eats sheep’s penis

This lurid and rather distasteful headline caught my attention in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Apparently, poor old Jamie Oliver had to put an animal’s private parts in his mouth and then eat it! Frankly, I had no idea that the poor chap was in the same hospital as me. In fact, I didn’t even know he was ill. The last I knew he was boring Americans to death travelling around the USA in his gas-guzzling (but carbon-neutral) camper van.

However, after a little further investigation I discovered that the sheep’s penis devoured by the nation’s favourite mockney chef was in fact a delicacy offered up to him during a visit he made to a native American reservation as part of his TV series. I just wonder if the tribe had a meeting of the elders prior to his arrival in order to discuss what to feed their honoured guest…

“Big heap English cook is coming to visit? What will we give him to eat?” asks the chief. “Should be food we eat,” he adds.

“Then we make him hamburger,” someone chimes in.

“Buffalo steak,” adds another.

Eventually the joker of the pack pipes up and says: “Let’s give him sheep penis for a laugh. See if big chef can eat it.”

And that’s probably how the whole thing came about. One of the visitors in my room while I was reading the story out aloud wanted to know how Jamie knew it was a sheep’s penis and not some other delicacy.

“I suppose it takes one to know one!” my other visitor helpfully chipped in.

Well it seems that Jamie quite enjoyed his chew on a sheep’s most intimate part and wouldn’t rule out eating one again. Not for a moment did I suspect that this whole story might have been dreamt up to get headlines for poor old Jamie’s TV show that appears to be struggling somewhat. No one would do a calculated thing like that just for publicity, would they?

Mind you, all this talk of Jamie eating odd things has quite put me off going to one of his restaurants. There’s one in my hometown and I went there once but I didn’t see Jamie doing the cooking. Perhaps it was his night off. But then I noticed that there are Jamie restaurants in other towns too. How on earth does the man manage to do all that cooking at the same time? Is he some sort of holy trinity? Do you think he makes the food in batches and then freezes it before moving on to the next restaurant?

Perhaps he has a special factory where all the food is produced in big vats before being chilled and sent to the restaurants and then reheated before being served up to the diners? If that’s the case then he’s definitely not the man to sort out hospital food because that’s what they do already.

Anyway, I think I’m going to have the hotpot for my lunch today. For some reason I just don’t fancy the toad in the hole.