The Anthony Bourdain fan club

If you've never heard of Anthony Bourdain you must have been living on a dessert island somewhere for the past few years. He's a chef, he made cheffing look sexy with his wry musings on the culinary underbelly. He is a remarkably unsentimental, unabashed son of a bitch who pulls no punches. I LOVE this guy!

He's not one of your "pretty" chefs. But he gets around and his programmes are usually done in his own voice or so say his producers. Guess he's not too affected by the writer's strike! Bourdain has written several books about his life and a few novels.Despite his seeming SOBness he's an entertaining read and you find that you are hooked, he seems not to care whether you like him or not.

Now you know having said this there is no way in hell that he would be found on the Food Network, America's food version of PBS, sanitised and prettified to within an inch of life. Ever notice how few black people there are, I guess we neither appreciate food nor do we cook. You tend to find people with melanin on Bobby Flay's Throwdown, and more power to him. Now I don't have so much of a problem with that, I like good food and I don't care much where or who it comes from.

BUT, I do have a problem with perky, annoying women in skimpy blouses, fake nails and hair flying all over the place purporting to be "chefs". My friend Debbie is a chef, an award winning one. I have NEVER seen her cook in anything but her whites, no clevage showing. Her longish hair is usually restrained oh yeah, and her nails are carefully trimmed. So don't get upset when Tony Bourdain takes stabs at you Rachel. He's not pretty but at least he's not telling you how fabulous and wonderful everything is every five minutes...and he looks like he knows what he's doing.