AN attempt by British National Party leader Nick Griffin to make his own cookery show has been met with incredulity from viewers.
The politician, who last week filed for bankruptcy, has made what appears to be the first of a series of cookery programmes for BNP TV, his party's channel on YouTube.
Standing in a kitchen in a Help for Heroes rugby shirt, Griffin shows viewers how to make a beef stew – "a recipe for beating the Tory blues" – for just £10. He explains that he wants to provide simple, cheap recipe ideas to BNP members whose "wives can't afford to put enough decent food on the table".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Griffin gets down to the basics with advice such as "different things take different times to cook" and "take the tin foil off your stock cubes", reports The Independent. But he cannot help throwing in a couple of asides on immigration too.
"English cookery actually for centuries was the best in Europe," he says at one point. "It only became very simple after the Hanoverians came over from Germany."
Later he tells viewers the word "curry" first appears in a cookery book during the reign of Richard II. "So don't let people tell you that you have to have huge numbers of immigrants to have good cooking."
He goes on: "We've got a Mexican restaurant in a town not far from here. The place isn't swamped with Mexicans. You take the recipe – that's really all you need."
The Metro, which describes Griffin as "the new Jamie Oliver" or "Master(race)Chef", points out that the key ingredient is, of course, British beef as well as plenty of "traditionally English" root vegetables.
More than 16,000 people have tuned in to watch the first 33-minute show online, with many turning to Twitter to express their disbelief. "The strangest way to be racist I've ever seen," said one tweeter, while others described the show as "racist cookery", "absurd" and a "popularity plea".
One tweeter joked that the show "probably starts off by getting some eggs and separating the whites", while another warns viewers: "Don't expect black pudding."
