Radio Times 26-1st April 2022

GORDON RAMSAY IS a man of action, as becomes immediately clear in the opening minutes of his new reality TV show starting this week on BBC1. No spoilers, but let’s just say when he first appears on screen at the start of his food-meets-business show he is not wearing his chef’s whites. If it wasn’t for his hair being whisked into those trademark meringue peaks, you might struggle to recognise who he is. Until he opens his mouth… In Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars, the famously foul-mouthed chef has plenty of opportunities for some three-star straight-talking, playing the Alan Sugar role in an Apprentice-style show for budding food entrepreneurs. If you thought his Lordship was an uncompromising mentor, then brace yourself for Ramsay. But while he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, no one…

Television Your TV guide starts on p37 ▶ 1 Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars Thursday 9.00pm BBC1 Gordon Ramsay looks for a food-and-drink entrepreneur worthy of his £150,000 investment, in a tasty new reality show full of bravado and tears. Yes, it’s essentially The Apprentice with aprons (and nicer people), but that’s no bad thing. FEATURE P8 ▶ 2 Falklands War: the Untold Story Sunday 9.00pm C4 Forty years on, veterans tell the chaotic inside story of a conflict that reshaped Britain but that we very nearly lost. It’s a superb, warts-and-all account, full of backbiting brigadiers and covert operations, revealed for the first time. FEATURE P14 ▶ 3 Holby City Tuesday 7.50pm BBC1 It’s your final ever appointment at Holby as the long-running hospital drama leaves our screens. But will Dr Sacha Levy (played by Bob Barrett, below) be dealing with…

GORDON RAMSAY “I’m watching Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,” says the TV chef.… “A great series. It’s beautiful. Heartfelt. Yeah, it’s very good. And he’s the real deal. Also Christina Tosi’s new baking show on Netflix, Bake Squad. I also want to see a new series of Narcos!” Future food stars — page 8 CHARLOTTE MOORE “I suppose I spend quite a lot of time watching the competition,” says the BBC’s chief content officer.” I’ve been watching Euphoria and Stay Close… I’m trying to pick out a show that was my favourite of last year… I think probably It’s a Sin.” Charlotte Moore on the future of the BBC — page 18 DON’T FORGET! Clocks go forward one hour at 1am on Saturday night…

TODAY THE NEWS is full of millions of people displaced from their homes in Ukraine. As I’m living in Prague with a living room and a sofabed, it was obvious I should open my home to a woman from Kyiv, coming with her belongings in a single bag with no place to go. She arrived three weeks ago and is now very much part of our family. I have known what it is like to go without a home. I grew up in the 80s before the phrase “screen time” even existed. Instead, the TV glowed in the corner of our living room from morning to night. Not so much a pet as a fourth member of a family made up of my mum, me and my little sister. Many of…

WHAT WE WATCHED By 1991, Sue Ellen had left JR and Dallas to move to England with her scriptwriter lover played by Ian McShane, and Linda Gray had also journeyed to the UK to be with McShane — albeit in a professional capacity — as a guest star on Lovejoy. “At the BBC, nobody treats you like a star,” said Gray. “You’re there to do the work like everybody else. And I liked that.” What she was less keen on was the fact that Dallas hadn’t pressured her to stay with the supersoap: “They said I was too expensive, which didn’t please me. The women’s salaries never compared to the men’s. There were people on the show making twice as much.” WHAT YOU SAID Columbo had been an enigma for years, but Martin…

Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars Thursday 9.00pm BBC1 ‘I’m not saying Alan Sugar’s up for retirement, but it’s about time the new kid was on the block’GORDON RAMSAY WHICH GORDON RAMSAY am I about to meet, I wonder, as I wait outside a south London photo studio? The loud, swearing, Kitchen Nightmares Ramsay of old – a man who would bawl out the weak and tremulous? Or the softer, gentler Ramsay, the one who cooed over his kids during lockdown and teared up with pride at daughter Tilly’s fabulous Strictly Come Dancing journey? It would be easy to forget this is still Ramsay the firebrand: a man whose on-screen tirades at what he perceived to be underperforming chefs and restaurateurs made him the most formidable celebrity chef on television in the 2000s. Watching…