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gordon ramsey eating rooks (1 Viewer)

seggs

Alrite!
caught some of this programme tonight the f word.
he was seen shooting what looked like young rooks from the tree tops then dressing ,cooking and eating them with his son!!!! and saying rooks should be brought to the dinner table...med evil! next it will be swan!!! nice to teach your kids nature ...( but he could not kill deer last week)
 
After last year's shooting of a woodcock by Hugh F-W which was stuffed inside a dish consisting of half a dozen other game birds of increasing size, each stuffed inside the other, then I thought TV couldn't get much worse - but this has equalled it for crassness.
 
Is this the same chef from Hell's Kitchen. You would think he would f-bomb the rooks instead of shooting them.
 
He's just a total pillock who's trying to recapture his fading star by doing his utmost to upset folks :C
Last week he was extolling the virtues of eating horses - did NOT go down too well on my riding site :C

Boring boring boring tv :storm: It's obviously easier and cheaper to produce cr*p like this than a decent intelligent documentary :brains:
I've been on holiday this last five days yet never turned the tv on once except for Springwatch - there just hasn't been owt else worth wasting time over :'D
 
I didn't watch the programme because I can't stand the guy, but aren't rooks the original 'four and twenty black birds, baked in a pie'?

Woody
 
Is this the same chef from Hell's Kitchen. You would think he would f-bomb the rooks instead of shooting them.

Yes the very same man.Failed footballer and after last night..a desperate Chef/TV Celeb.As I work with children,I found it pathetic to see his Son,dressed in camoflauge clothing and shooting at Rooks sitting on a tree from close distance."What a ****".
 
I watched this programme, and I don't see what the problem is. As he pointed out, large numbers of rooks are shot every year - why not make use of them? Given that I eat chicken, I don't see how I can object to anyone eating rooks.

However, it was slightly disturbing to see him encouraging his son to take an interest in guns at an early age.
 
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Forgot to add there was a bit in one of the weekend papers about how upset he is at one of his lambs he was rearing on David Beckham's land being killed by a mystery beast. According to an 'expert' it was taken by a big cat!!!
How exciting......the Beast of Beckingham Palace! :clap:

LOL Posh should be ok.....no meat on her for the cat to be interested in :'D
 
Boring boring boring tv... It's obviously easier and cheaper to produce cr*p like this than a decent intelligent documentary...

Well said, Gill. Ah... if only the money didn't follow people like him and programmes like that - there's the rub; and it follows them because they have an audience. And I suppose we'd be called elitist or the like if we dared to argue against that audience's tastes.

Even my son was telling me yesterday that the new Big Brother was much, much worse than the last, which he thought had reached rock bottom. But, as I say, there must be an audience out there - and a big one, to satisfy the advertisers.

I'm reminded of a poem by Philip Larkin:

Fiction and the Reading Public

Give me a thrill, says the reader,
Give me a kick;
I don’t care how you succeed or
What subject you pick.
Chose something you know all about
That’ll sound like real life:
Your childhood, your Dad pegging out,
How you sleep with your wife.

But that’s not sufficient, unless
You make me feel good –
Whatever you’re ‘trying to express’
Let it be understood
That ‘somehow’ God plaits up the threads,
Makes ‘all for the best’,
That we may lie quiet in our beds
And not be ‘depressed’.

For I call the tune in this racket:
I pay your screw,
Write reviews and the bull on the jacket –
So stop looking blue
And start serving up your sensations
Before it’s too late;
Just please me for two generations –
You’ll be ‘truly great’.

Philip Larkin
 
Nowt wrong with eating horses, Gill - 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong!

Incidently, the rooks that are shot for food are 'branchers' - the young chicks that are just at the point of fledging. Nobody eats full-grown rooks (nobody in their right mind, anyway). I find it a bit mean to eat fledglings, it's hardly sporting and it doesn't seem very fair either. But shooting branchers is, and has been for a long time, a popular sport among landowners and shooting types.

Incidently, Giles Coren, the restaurant critic, was writing in the Times the other week how he and his mate were happily taking pot shots at breeding rooks at his neighbour's property - the reason being that they wake his neighbour up! He said he gets about 2 a week. That, to me, is pointless, wrong and especially mean when they have young. There's a lot of it about though - rooks are seen as fair game by just about everyone with a gun.

I've got no problem eating a driven woodcock, lamped hare, shot teal or other wildfowl, and have done, but I would draw the line at fledglings and breeding birds on moral grounds alone.

I recall Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall climbing a rook nest to take the chicks to eat, in Cook on the Wild Side.

In a way, it's good that people are reconnecting with wild food, as that gives these animals a 'value' in their mind, which tends to make people care about them more and want to preserve them. But I think if you're going to kill somethign to eat then it at least deserves to have had a chance at life first, and a fighting (sporting?) chance of eluding you if it's good enough. Quite what chance a 5 week old rook has as it leaves the nest for the first time, well.......
 
Nobody eats full-grown rooks (nobody in their right mind, anyway). I find it a bit mean to eat fledglings, it's hardly sporting and it doesn't seem very fair either. But shooting branchers is, and has been for a long time, a popular sport among landowners and shooting types......

I've got no problem eating a driven woodcock, lamped hare, shot teal or other wildfowl, and have done, but I would draw the line at fledglings and breeding birds on moral grounds alone.


This is a fair argument and has made me reconsider my earlier comments. However, I suppose it depends on whether you consider what was going on as a sporting activity or a means of harvesting wild food. Obviously it's a blurred boundary and most rook shooting is purely for 'sport'. However, in this programme, he decided he wanted to eat rook, went out into the woods and shot some and then cooked them. Is that any different from eating a chicken? They don't have a sporting chance either - it's just that we are disconnected from the killing part of the process.

I suppose there are parallels with the Lewis Guga hunt, which originated not as a sporting activity, but as a means of harvesting much needed protein.

One thing I will take issue with is a comment Gordon Ramsey made, which was that 'controlling' rook numbers is best done by shooting the fledglings. Even the most basic knowledge of population dynamics would suggest that killing young birds (a high proportion of which will die anyway) is unlikely to be an effective way of controlling the population.
 
Agree very much with Poecile here, except that I think harvesting fledglings for food can be acceptable, c.f. Gannets. Caper's quite right to point out it's effect on populations.

However, I suspect the item was more about ensuring further publicity for the so-called celebrity rather than any attempt to get people to connect with food, wild or otherwise.

And when did we start handing out OBEs for swearing and shouting a lot?
 
Agree very much with Poecile here, except that I think harvesting fledglings for food can be acceptable, c.f. Gannets. Caper's quite right to point out it's effect on populations.

However, I suspect the item was more about ensuring further publicity for the so-called celebrity rather than any attempt to get people to connect with food, wild or otherwise.

And when did we start handing out OBEs for swearing and shouting a lot?

Many gunmakers used to produce specific 'rook rifles' - with slightly larger calibres than your average .22 (from obscure calibres such as .22 hornet and .22 swift, up to .310 cal.). Not sure why - I think .22's only became popular in the UK after 1900.

I'd agree with Poecile, taking pot-shots at adult rooks simply because they're making a noise is wrong, and condemns their offsprings to death by starvation. Don't really have a problem with shooting juvs to eat though if I'm honest.

I'd agree with you Brian about Ramsey - the man's obnoxious. Why do TV bosses think we want to watch self-important bullies humiliating inadequate individuals who'll do anything for their four minutes of fame?

Jonathan
 
Anyone remember the Two Ronnies sketch about The Rook Restaurant ? (showing my age now) where every dish has Rook in it, including such delicacies as Rook-and-raspberry-ripple ...

RC: "This is certainly not the place to come to do if you don't like Rook"
RB: "Actually it is".
RC: "Why?".
RB: "Because we serve bloody awful Rook, that's why. It's old, tough and stringy".
 
I remember going down into our local woods to a Romany gypsy family and their horse drawn caravan when I was a young boy for a meal of rook,nice people ,nice memories.
 
When you watch Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, in which he's actually quite thoughtful and seems genuinely caring, you realise that his shouty-sweary persona is just an act. That's his schtick, and that's what they pay him for. A bit like Jeremy Clarkson, really. If either of them were half as obnoxious, bullying and misanthropic in real life then they wouldn't be married with families!

Rook rifles were marketed as a good gun for ladies, if I recall correctly.

I wish we had horse meat in Tesco - I prefer it to beef. I'd rather eat one than bet on one, put it that way.
 
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