Borra Garson

Even if you’re Bored of the Heat, Please Stay in the Kitchen

No matter what topic is being covered in a TV show or series, I have no illusion that ultimately, TV is there to entertain us. Yes it is occasionally enlightening, however, when you watch a show covering a subject on which you have a deep knowledge, I am sure you’ll agree TV is maddeningly shallow and trite. So I was quite surprised at all the furor over Gordon Ramsay’s recent show about shark fin soup. Channel 4 likes to commission across a theme, and their Fish Fight was no different to that. They would expect all their main chef presenters to participate and contribute a show to their “season”, and there would be a decision making process governing who does what. Pairing up Gordon with sharks was an entertainment coup, and indeed the press leading up to its broadcast demonstrated some good ratings pulling thinking behind that decision.

But I was really annoyed on Gordon’s behalf that the programme itself pitched him as a believable spokesperson on this topic, and as an investigative reporter, when clearly he was neither. The twitters during the broadcast were understandably mostly shocked at the practice of finning, and patted Gordon on the back for exposing this horrible harvest to the masses. It also seemed that people thought Gordon had wanted to do a programme on this, as he was so repulsed himself, but the whole voyage of supposed discovery was lost on them. Of course this set up Gordon nicely for the PR disaster that followed, when photos were released of him shark fishing about a year before. Surprise surprise, Gordon is not the bleeding heart liberal we thought he was… The end result was a brand bashing of note with a lot of snide remarks about watching Gordon in his tight t-shirt caught up in an “I’m Matt Damon” fantasy.

For me the worst part of the show was something nobody will remember; when he walked past a boat, looking for dead sharks and he said something like “Oh that’s just a tuna boat”. Dig a little deeper and the tuna story is almost more shocking than the finning (but not nearly as entertaining or spectacular). In 2008 alone, 4 million tonnes of commercial tuna was caught worldwide, and that included 57.5% of skipjack tuna’s global population. How much longer can that go on? In a country which consumes gazillions of tins of tuna every year, I felt this was the more important and relevant topic to cover, and yet Gordon just strolled on by and we the audience were left none the wiser. I would think the UK public mostly have never eaten shark fin soup, so the good that has come of this show is minimal.