TV or not TV?: TV's love affair with hospitality

16 February 2006
TV or not TV?: TV's love affair with hospitality

he BBC's Hotel Babylon might not be an entirely accurate reflection of the hotel world, but its place on prime-time television suggests that the viewing public just can't get enough of the industry. Hospitality-related shows - and personalities - are everywhere, from Hell's Kitchen, Ready Steady Cook and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares to The Dragon's Den, The Apprentice and Get Your House In Order, not to mention I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! and Antony Worrall Thompson's appearance in the Australian jungle.

There's clearly a bit of an affair going on. But is the relationship symbiotic or one-sided, tilted firmly in TV's favour? Is it healthy for the industry to appear to be invading the country's living rooms?

It's easy to see what TV producers and scheduling dons get from certain sectors of the hospitality industry. Their job is to make good, lively, dramatic television. Restaurants, in particular, hand this to them on a plate. "The professional kitchen is a pressurised environment, with head chefs who are famous for their tempers," agrees Time Out television critic Emma Perry. "Even with hotels, there is a delicate ongoing relationship between staff, who have to rely on each other when they probably hate each other. TV loves conflict."

Perfect proposition
And it loves a ready-made soap opera. For Billy Paulett, executive producer on Channel 4's Risking It All, which follows the fortunes of people trying to leave the rat race and start a new life, the hospitality industry was the perfect proposition for the strand's new series. Protagonists in forthcoming episodes are seen opening a bar, a restaurant, a hotel and a juice bar. "We chose this industry because these are places we can all relate to," he says. "We have all eaten at good and bad restaurants, and we have an opinion as to how we could run it better."

Yet how beneficial it is for hospitality to be seen in the raw, as it were, is the subject of heated debate. There are some who argue that any publicity is good publicity, others who say the exact opposite. Next week sees the return of Gordon Ramsay to the nation's TV screens for the third series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. If you're not that au fait with Ramsay's TV offerings, this is the one where he goes into various restaurants as a troubleshooter and gives them his own unique version of a kick up the backside.

Eye-watering vocabulary
Last time this series aired, the letters pages of Caterer were filled with a flurry of opinions, split between support for Ramsay's efforts to weed out bad practice and bitter condemnation of his frank-but-persuasive management technique. Critics hated his eye-watering vocabulary and full-on management style. It gave the industry a bad name, they said.

Steve Bacon, general manager of hospitality and catering at the Guernsey College of Further Education, even wrote in the island's local newspaper that programmes such as Kitchen Nightmares had been a major contributory factor in forcing his college to close its full-time hospitality course. "This is the first time we have not had enough kids for the full-time NVQ course. They watch these programmes and think they are going to get shouted and screamed at," he stated.

It's not a new scenario. Nine years ago the Britannia Adelphi hotel in Liverpool starred in a fly-on-the-wall BBC series which didn't always paint the industry in a good light. Pundits lined up for and against the series. But here's food for thought: occupany levels rose to almost 100% in the wake of the series.

Over the past decade, behind-the-scenes television has certainly had a track record of capturing the seamier side of life in commercial kitchens. A younger Ramsay was trailed when he was at Aubergine for the 1999 series Ramsay's Boiling Point and seen hurling pans and verbal abuse; while earlier, in 1995, John Burton Race's kitchen at L'Ortolan was the scene of apparent physical abuse for an episode of The Big Story.

Squirm again
These scenes make those inside the industry who want to paint only the rosiest of pictures of a career in hospitality squirm. And no doubt they will squirm again when the new Kitchen Nightmares series (to be screened on 21 February) features a chef succumbing to alcoholism.

The restaurant in question is Oscar's in Nantwich, Cheshire, where the chef is drinking on the job. Ramsay tells him to stop, but his addiction is so severe that when he does, he collapses - during service. It is dramatic stuff and will raise the eyebrows of many outsiders.

Should the industry, therefore, be wary of being exploited for television? Well, to Kitchen Nightmares' credit, the episode in question also includes footage of Ramsay interviewing Michael Quinn, of The Ark Foundation. Quinn, who used to be executive head chef at the Ritz in London, nearly killed himself through drink and set up The Ark Foundation to help others turn away from addiction. "It is just fantastic that Kitchen Nightmares even knows about The Ark," he says. "Gordon comes across as very intense, but he wanted to know how the programme could help the chef."

In the wider context, television has helped drive the restaurant renaissance all over the country. As well as being executive producer of Kitchen Nightmares, Patricia Llewellyn was also the person who "discovered" Jamie Oliver, who, in turn, switched on a whole new generation to food. "Jamie cooking for his mates in his flat made it legitimate for young people to like food," says Llewellyn. "There is no doubt we have become a nation of foodies, and television has contributed to that."

And it appears that the industry is going to have to embrace television even more. The UK Food Network is already giving continuous access to food programmes for those who want them. As well as a new series of Kitchen Nightmares and Risking It All, there is another series of Ramsay's The F-Word in the spring; and one of the contestants on the new series of Alan Sugar's The Apprentice is a restaurant manager.

Moreover, Yo! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe predicts that we have seen just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the encroachment of media into everyday life. TV on demand - the recent development that allows viewers to access programmes when they want - will be extended to mobiles, so you will soon be able to download The Apprentice or Kitchen Nightmares wherever you are.

Television and the media are feeding off the industry - so the industry needs to learn to feed off them, too.

James Martin Chef James Martin might be known by many for his toe-tapping talents on last year's Strictly Come Dancing, but it was actually more than 10 years ago that he first hit our screens on BBC2's Ready Steady Cook, after being spotted by a TV producer.

At the time, Martin, aged 22, was working as head chef at the Hotel du Vin in Winchester. "I was demoralised with working long hours and earning no money," he says. "When Ready Steady Cook came along, I just grabbed the opportunity."

A decade on, does he now consider himself a celebrity or a chef? "First and foremost, I'm a chef. I just happen to cook on TV," says Martin, who also owns a delicatessen and, in a venture with P&O, has two cruise liner restaurants in the pipeline.

"Television has helped me enormously," he admits. "Not just financially. I think I'm a better chef now, because I've travelled all over the world and I'm more knowledgeable about food and ingredients."

On Strictly Come Dancing, it might have been Martin's footwork rather than his cooking that was put under the spotlight, but he doesn't think the programme did his credentials any harm. "It doesn't take away what I do for a living, and it's raised my profile enormously," he says. "After all, we're talking 15 million viewers for each programme, and many of those probably didn't know who I was before."

He thinks that there is still snobbery surrounding the idea of celebrity chefs, though. "There's still this notion that you're not a real chef, but that's complete bollocks," he argues. "I trained in a three-Michelin-starred kitchen, and food is my job. Just because I'm on TV doesn't mean I'm not serious about what I do."

Overall he thinks TV has had a positive effect on restaurants and food. "The industry has had to buck up its ideas," he says. "It's no longer about Berni Inns serving up a steak on Saturday night. People are demanding quality food because they're cooking it themselves. That's purely down to the influence of TV."

What about reality-style shows, like Hell's Kitchen, for instance? He disagrees with the idea that they're bad for the commercial kitchen's image. "I think Hell's Kitchen was good for the catering industry," he explains. "It showed how bloody hard it can be in a kitchen. Now, if people go to a restaurant and their main course is 10 minutes late, they might understand why, thanks to programmes like that."

So what's the future for chefs on television? "Well, food programmes need real chefs, for a start," Martin says. "Watching some actor travel around China with a wok isn't my idea of good viewing."

Above all, he stresses, the focus has to be on entertainment. "Serious cooking in a serious kitchen can be boring to watch," he warns. "Nobody wants to watch 15 onions being chopped. But there's plenty of mileage for new shows, even if it's not the reality-style stuff. I think we'll see more about ingredients and the history of food in the future."

Interview by Emma Allen

Simon Woodroffe Simon Woodroffe, founder of the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain and head of the burgeoning Yo! Company, had contributed to previous television programmes, but being picked as one of the dragons for the BBC2 series The Dragons' Den, Auntie's window of opportunity for wannabe entrepreneurs, massively increased his profile.

In pure business terms, he found that people returned his telephone calls and he was able to double his public-speaking fee, but Woodroffe says he has enjoyed getting street recognition, too. "I've never had anything but good from it," he says. "People can be so British about fame, saying ‘Oh, I only do it for business.' Bollocks."

Exposure for the industry on TV is good, he believes: even negative coverage. "We can all judge the various shows that have revealed real life in the industry, but at some stage the truth would have come out anyway," he says. "Kids at school can see people not doing it very well and be inspired to think they could do it better."

The perceived wisdom is that when TV producers look for potential stars of the small screen they are hunting for the "X factor". But Woodroffe thinks that experience as much as natural charisma can provide that mystery ingredient. "I have done so much public speaking that I am more natural now - but at the beginning of my career I wouldn't have been any good," he says. "Each of the dragons on the series was different. You can't analyse what the TV companies are looking for."

The most important thing, he says, is to be straight-up, sincere and enthusiastic: "People respect simple-minded passion. When we are not ourselves, people want to knock us."

He predicts a new era of businessmen appearing on television - and a new boom for entrepreneurs. "They are the new celebrity chefs," he argues. "All the TV companies are looking for the next business idea, and every businessman is queuing up to be on TV."

So what's next? "I'd like to do something that is beyond conventional business programming," he says. "I can imagine more businessmen or chefs doing guest appearances on shows. I realised when I was doing television because of Yo! Sushi that there was only so much you could say about the quality of the food and the interiors. So I just started talking about the world and life and everything. You become much more interesting when you aren't just talking about food."

But his vision of television in the future doesn't stop there. "Google Earth is amazing, but in five years' time it could be live, so that all individuals could have all their movements tracked," he says. "Any of your friends would be able to zoom in and see you walking down the street and know where you are. Even this conversation with you could be streamed live into the public domain, so if someone was interested in what I have to say about television, it could be flagged up to them that I was going to be interviewed at 11am."

In that sense, everybody will need to embrace the media. "We will look back and realise we were infants when it came to the media and TV," he continues. "We will all need to interact with our peers through media and on TV screens in our daily lives. We will all be playing many parts - and in business you will have to be good at performing through the media to be in the game."

Tim Hadcock-Mackay Successful businessman Tim Hadcock-Mackay started his hotel career in 1985 at London's Stafford hotel and is now chairman of Distinguished Hotels International. His TV career includes BBC2's Ditch The Day Job and Channel 4's Time To Get Your House In Order.

How did you get on TV? By complete accident. I used to give talks at colleges, and one day someone from the BBC came along. They obviously thought, "Ooh, he's a bit odd, he'd be great for TV" and they approached me to do Ditch The Day Job, which showed entrepreneurs how to get started. It interested me because I could use my hotel industry experience to help people.

What effect has your TV career had on your business?
To be completely honest, very little so far. Of course, it's raised my profile, and I do get recognised in the street, but if we're talking direct results, then being on television hasn't had much of an impact. But I didn't go into it for that. For me, it's more about being a champion of the hotel industry, which I'm very proud of.

Can TV benefit the hotel industry?
Yes, but I think we have to be careful. Take the programme about the Adelphi in Liverpool, for instance, which didn't do the hotel or the industry any good at all. And now we've got Hotel Babylon, where everyone's dressed in Armani and shagging each other, not showing the reality of 14-hour shifts and working bloody hard. But if we can make programmes that show tourism is the best industry this country's got and that hotels are hugely exciting and dynamic, then great.

Chefs have a specific skill to air on TV. What do hoteliers have?
It's completely different, because hotels are all about fulfilling expectation and creating memories, not offering a tangible skill like teaching someone to cook. But there are angles for TV. It would be wonderful to see a programme on what makes a great hotelier or, from a business angle, how hotels make their money.

Are hotels going to be TV's next big thing?
There's no doubt that hotels are boiling hot at the moment. But everyone's obsessed with celebrity nowadays. We've got wannabe TV chefs, wannabe TV presenters and I'm worried we'll get wannabe TV hoteliers. The last thing the industry needs is floods of people deciding to run a B&B in Bognor just because they want to be on television. You have to be passionate about what you do first, not driven by a need for fame.

So what advice would you give to a charismatic hotelier wanting to get on TV? I can't stress enough that they must do their research. Don't just take the first phone call from any old production company that wants to do a fly-on-the-wall of your business. Secondly, make sure you get a contract. Thirdly, remember that having a TV crew around can be enormously distracting. Above all, go into it with your eyes open. Remember that not all publicity is good publicity.

Interview by Emma Allen

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