‘Tis the Season
Posted: Tue 20 December, 2005 Filed under: Festering Season, Thoughts 3 Comments »
So seven viewers complained about Gordon Ramsay slaughtering turkeys live on his Channel Four program, The F-Word.
Several points occur to me.
1) Only seven people complained? Blimey, that’s good going. According to unofficial viewing figures that edition had 2.5 million viewers. Seven complaints equals (breaks out the calculator) a whopping 0.0000028% of the audience that complained. Fucking hell, what an outrage.
2) Hmm, it’s not really a shocker, is it? Gordon Ramsay has always believed that any publicity is good publicity. Even if he’s remembered as “Gordon Ramsay, the man who killed turkeys on live TV”, he’s still remembered. And if people don’t like the way he works, that’s their problem, not his.
3) Equally, Channel 4’s never been exactly publicity shy, and tries to push the envelope where possible. So they’re not going to be upset at all the free advertising in the press.
4) As Gordon said, if you’re going to be offended, why keep on watching? You’ve seen one get killed, the odds are the rest are going the same way. Switch over, or switch off. Otherwise it looks like you’re the kind of prissy mealy-mouthed Mary Whitehouse type who watches in order to find something to be shocked about.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to see turkeys slaughtered on TV any more than I’d want to see cows slaughtered. I’ve seen it before – it doesn’t bother me per se but it’s not stuff I’d want to see. That’s what the other channels are for. Or even the off switch. But, as Ramsay has been saying all the way through, the killing is part of the process. He was using it to show his children the way the world works, and it’s really no surprise that he’d extend that to showing other people. I suspect that a large majority of people never think of their christmas turkey as being alive, or the killing and work that takes place before they get to the shelves of Tesco or wherever.
And to me, the more people that start basing themselves in reality, of knowing how these things happen before they get to their nice little hermetically sealed package on the shelf, the better.
I’m surprised and also pleased that there were only a few complaints about that. It was a very informative part of the programme and, although the actual killing wasn’t nice, being someone who eats meat I felt I really should know how it gets to the table. I am now a little wiser – and still not a vegetarian.
I come from a farming family, my granda still farms although he’s growing barley only now, the killing bit is something I’ve understood all my life but to be fair if i thought about it or was reminded about it regularly, once is ok, then I would deffo become veggie…….that episode made me wince but not much more. Although I must confess that the ham sarnie I was eating when we were discussing it at work didn’t get finished, I kinda went off it.
I’m glad someone went out of his way to be ‘educational’ even if that wasn’t neccessarily what he was after.
To be fair, a course work sent me on involved sitting in a room in a shiny new building overlooking scenes of industrial wasteland near the Tyne, learning such gems as “every one complaint represents ten people who didn’t complain” so that’s… 0.000028% of the viewing population who found it offensive.
Good grief, if you can’t handle watching animals being killed, you should not be eating meat. Also, as you say, press the off button!