Jamie in backlash over latest show

3:30pm Saturday 4th October 2008

Jamie Oliver may have bitten off more than he can chew this time - after being accused of making the residents of a Yorkshire town look like "numpties" and "thickos".

The TV chef is facing a furious backlash over his latest show, in which he teaches cookery to eight families in Rotherham.

Oliver, 33, targeted the town after mothers were pictured shoving burgers and chips through school railings in protest at menus suggested in his previous series, Jamie's School Dinners.

In the first episode of Jamie's Ministry of Food, watched by three million viewers, Oliver met an unemployed mother-of-two who fed her children solely on fast food takeaways, and a woman who regularly eats ten packets of crisps for dinner.

His idea is to teach "pyramid cooking" - where each of the eight people he trains will teach two of their friends, and they will do the same until 250,000 have been taught to cook.

But John Gilding, leader of Rotherham Council's Tory group, said the programme, which was broadcast on Tuesday night and was the first in a four part series, gave the wrong impression.

"The people he put on television were pretty downmarket and he gave the impression that everyone living here is like that," he said.

"His idea is to have eight volunteers teach two of their friends and so on until a quarter of a million people have learned to cook - well that is the whole population of the town.

"It looks like he thinks we're all as thick as planks, and that we live on doner kebabs.

"People are enraged about it. I agree that he has a point with regards to school dinners and it is good he is trying to educate people but Rotherham people are not numpties."