Oh why, oh why, oh, why?

Why on earth did Raymond Blanc, who seems a sensible enough chap, agree to continue with the third series of The Restaurant (BBC 2 Thursday) once the current band of no-hopers had been selected to appear.

Surely there must have been a point where Raymond and his sidekicks might have held up their hands and said ‘let’s call the whole thing off’. Is this really the best that a nationwide trawl for would be business partners of one brightest stars of UK cuisine can produce? Last year’s lot were pretty poor but this year’s are just dire.

We are now halfway through this debacle and there are very few signs of improvement.

Aside from Natalie and Sandy who were thrown out largely because of their kamikaze attempt to open a coconut with a kitchen knife before the competition got started, the attempts to address the various catering challenges have revealed either borderline competence at best but more often complete ineptitude.

Natalie and Sandy were a danger to themselves and couldn’t cook. Sarah and Joe were eliminated because they couldn’t explain their concept, not even a bit, not even a name. I find myself again asking the blinding obvious question about reality TV “had these people not bothered to watch the previous series? What did they think was going to happen?”

A pair of florists from Windsor bit the dust - Janet combined interpersonal skills of a cabbage and the culinary talent of a tulip while husband Sean trotted out the blarney in a feeble attempt to conceal his total lack of organisational ability.

When finally the restaurants opened Frances and Lucy, both young blond and painfully naïve, hit some hard luck when the oven appeared to be out of action - shouldn’t production check out this kind of thing before it all starts - but they proved incapable when it came to the relatively simple task of ordering decent fish.

Then in Thursday night’s episode (19 Nov 09) ex-army misfits with the exceedingly silly names Barney and Badger fell on their swords despite appearing to be the pair most likely to succeed the previous week. Barney, or was it Badger but why should I care, failed to run front-of-house despite an Army career in logistics - scary. He decided he just couldn’t cope, as it was “all so different to the army”. Just get the can of Tenants Purple Tin now and start shouting at passing cars.

This sorry performance leaves four couples as putative business partners to the very short French bloke. Being short, as I have pointed out before, is de rigueur in business reality shows - Alan Sugar sits in a high chair between Margaret Mountford and Nick Hewer, Le Blanc stands on a step between David Moore and Sarah Willingham.

The remaining four couples inspire little confidence. Daisy and Nadine stood around like lemons at the market and produced badly presented slop. Chris and Nathan bitch at each other. While it seems Chris can cook, front-of-house Nathan’s relations with the customers are modelled on Basil Fawlty. JJ and James, are a culinary Jedward - blond and dangerously talentless. These eighties leftovers and quite the most annoying creatures on TV right now survived past halfway by default without the first idea of how to cook to the manifest exasperation of Sarah Willington.

Indeed Ms Willington’s expressions, which mostly say ‘what the Blanc have I done agreeing to invest in this’ are by far the most entertaining aspect of The Restaurant.

That leaves Rebecca and Stephen, aka Mr and Mrs Blobby. Their restaurant, The Front Room soon to be re-title Chav-u-Like, proved to be the best of a catastrophic bunch largely because Stephen can do the numbers, having worked in a hospital kitchen, and is ‘up for it’, despite Rebecca repeatedly gagging at anything that isn’t spam and beans and having eaten, I speculate, a considerable number of the pies.

Maybe it is a recession thing. Perhaps more sensible people think twice right now
about giving up their day job to take a punt at winning a reality series. Perhaps by now sensible people who might otherwise have been interested have actually, unlike this lot, watched the show and concluded that “running a restaurant is far more difficult than it looks”.

Meanwhile spare a thought for Raymond - he could have walked. I’m sure a quick phone call to fellow shortie Nick Sarkosy and the considerably less daunting task of EU President could have been his for the asking.