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It
is not often that television takes a serious look at the curry
industry in Britain but the announcement of an edition of The Money
Programme on 5th March on the subject promised thirty minutes of
expert comment.
Instead, the
programme produced and directed by Penny Palmer on BBC2 offered a
poorly researched and presented package that did more to publicise
Tiffinbites, Cobra and Noon than take a serious look at one of
Britain's most vibrant industries. It even concluded that "curry
houses are stuck in a bit of a rut".
The programme
focused around the successful development of Tiffinbites whose
central kitchen "eliminates the vagiaries of bad chefs"
according to the programme - so successful that, on 16th January
2009, the administrator was called in and the business taken over by
V8 Gourmet Ltd.
Apart from acting
as a free advertising platform (BBC remember) for Tiffinbites as well
as Cobra and Noon, the programme promised to look at where the
industry was going. I must have missed that bit as the question never
seemed to be asked or answered. Instead we had a plethora of poorly
researched and downright wrong "facts". These included :
"no Indian
restaurant groups in Britain" - the very successful Aagrah Group
in Yorkshire, Harlequin in Glasgow and Jubraj in Wales and others
wouldn't agree.
"15000 Indian
restaurants in Britain" arrived at on the basis of pick a number
- any number presumably.
"the industry
was started to satisfy the demand of ex-pats from India" - it
was started by individuals, many of them seamen, initially to serve
their own community.
"60 years ago
(1949) their were only 6 Indian restaurants in Britain" how
about Veeraswamy in 1927(still open), Halal(still open), Durbar,
Dilkush, Shalimar, Bengal Indian, Punjab(still open) and the Bahadur
family openings in Brighton, Oxford, Northampton, Cambridge and
Manchester and many more, all before 1949.
Instead of
cataloguing the achievements of the industry, the programme kept
going back to curry's "late nights and lager" image that
thousands of restaurants have worked so hard to dispel.
How much more
interesting this programme could - and should - have been. Where was
mention of the curry scene outside London? Where were comments from
Arun Harnal of Bombay Brasserie which kicked off the modern Indian
cuisine revolution in 1982 or Namita Panjabi of Chutney Mary, one of
the industry's most successful entrepreneurs or Rajesh Suri of
Tamarind? Where were interviews with industry leaders such as Cyrus
Todiwala of Café Spice Namaste, Sanjay Anand of Madhu's - the
huge outside catering market was not even mentioned - Mohammed Aslam
of Aagrah or Enam Ali of Le Raj?
The programme
started with Tiffinbites, had taste-testing at Tiffinbites and even
ended with Tiffinbites. I certainly do not blame that company for
enjoying all the free publicity it could get, but BBC2 and The Money
Programme should make better use of licence holders' fees.
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