Readers turned to their local paper to voice their outrage at what they claimed was a negative portrayal of their town by TV chef Jamie Oliver – prompting widespread debate in the national press.

The weekly Rotherham Advertiser has been closely following public reaction to Oliver’s Ministry of Food project which aims to get more people in the town to cook for themselves.

But the first episode of the show, which aired on Channel 4 the week before last, was greeted with dismay by many residents who claimed the chef had painted a misleading picture of “a poor, downtrodden town living on kebabs and takeaways.”

The Advertiser gathered reaction from residents and local politicians before putting their concerns to Channel Four and a representative of Jamie Oliver.

The newspaper’s front-page story, published under the headline Cookin’ Awful!, was followed up by the Sunday Times and other national media including the Guardian, GMTV and Radio 2

The Advertiser’s leader said: “While there is no doubt that the programme did not portray Rotherham in a good light, we believe the public is sufficiently intelligent to appreciate that the first instalment was setting the scene from a pretty low base and that the principal participants were not chosen because they were representative of Rotherham as a whole.”

The leader also pointed out that Jamie had previously forged a link with the town during his School Dinners campaign when a local woman who had dramatically opposed the junk food crackdown passed a takeaway through the school railings.

The title has since received 15 letters about the Ministry of Food programme was planning to run a double letters page to accommodate them.

Comments

Unhappysnapper (13/10/2008 16:18:27)
I’m disappointed with Jamie Oliver’s comments… Rotherham is MUCH worse than that! Hehehe!

Neil Speight (13/10/2008 17:16:11)
What they should also have pointed out was that of the eight people featured in Jamie’s original group of would-be cooks, one came from Goldthorpe and one from Doncaster. I may be pedantic but they are not in Rotherham. The location of a couple of the others was not given, so who knows where they come from. And much of the aerial footage showed Sheffield. But of course, why should any TV crew from London know owt about anywhere north of Watford? Actually I admire the programme and Jamie’s clear sense of urgency and passion – but I can’t wait till he slaps that know-all old trout in the chops! PS: I once married Rotherham lass and she was a bloody good cook.