Marco’s Kitchen Burnout- ITV1- Fridays @ 9pm- 7 out of 10

Chefs. Don't you love angry ones. Ones that can multi-task. Ones that can cook, appear on TV, shout at people and swear like a sailor all at the same time, like a drunk man at a fancy dress party. My personal favourite is Marco Pierre White and his show, egotistically titled Marco's Kitchen Burnout.

Basically, what happens is three people (I refuse to call them celebrities on grounds of honesty) are let into White's restaurant to cook for regular punters. This time around, the three untrained chefs are comedian Jason Byrne (who somehow is given that job title without being funny), 'actress 'Debra Stevenson and professional wife of a football manager Nancy Dell'Olio who resembles a disenfranchised hawk. Stuffed with botox.

But of course the real star is White himself, who we find wearing a scarf that occasionally becomes headwear for some reason only known to Marco himself, although it does make him look a bit like a younger, less walnut-like Keith Richards.

Marco really is a scary example of a human being who shouts and goads like an insane man awaiting the arrival of a bus whilst completely oblivious to the fact he is stood next to a tree and not a bus stop. "How's my sea bream?! How's my sea bream?! How's my sea bream?! Table one! Table one! Table one! " he exclaims at no-one in particular.

The show is narrated by Alexander Armstrong, who I imagine sat in some kind of Blaine-esque Perspex box over the action, commenting on it like it's a bizarre kind of social experiment where people are subjected to torture by kitchen at the hands of a merciless chef, which is basically what this show is in fact.

The series consists of a series of heats, cos the show is called Marco's Kitchen Burnout. Get it? Yeah I did too, sadly. Continuing the semantic field, there are a lot of fires in the kitchen, although that might be more to do with the contestants cookery skills.

For their main challenge, contestants get to pick out ingredients from a mobile larder type thing (basically the fruit and veg aisle in Tesco, just in the back of a truck). The fact that three people, without training, can pick out enough variety of food for making 3 course meals for 24 people is rather impressive, or perhaps not strictly accurate. Surely they have professional help, for health and safety reasons at the very least.

Anywho, after the three contestants serve, and don't kill the customers, Marco gives them a score out of 100 and the two highest advance through to endure more torture sessions before an inevitable breakdown culminating in one of them committing the ultimate sin using a spatula. But they won't broadcast that. Cowards.


Dan