Return To Jamie's Kitchen (C4)

The Key (BBC2)

Dessert chef Kerry-Ann had gone missing from the kitchen at Number Ten. She'd nipped out for a quick drag on a fag just as the lady of the house, Cherie Blair, came to inspect Oliver's Army as they prepared lunch at Downing Street.

Who'd have thought a year ago that these teenagers were on the dole? Now they're cooking a four-course meal for the Prime Minister and his lunch guests.

Far be it from me to suggest that spin doctors decreed it would be good PR for Mr Blair to be associated with such a worthy project as chef Jamie Oliver's self-financed bid to take 15 youngsters off the streets and teach them to be chefs at his new restaurant.

The PM enjoyed the outside catering, although his fulsome praise - "fabulous meal, one of the best I ever had" - didn't say much for Cherie's cooking. She, incidentally, wasn't invited to lunch, merely to visit the kitchens while the cameras were there.

This was the first of two instalments catching up with the trainee chefs as they reach the end of their year's training. Nothing has changed. The youngsters are still dropping like flies (the remaining 12 became nine within minutes of the episode starting) and Jamie's still using four-letter words as freely as olive oil is doused on the dishes.

His restaurant, Fifteen, is a wild success, after opening six weeks and £1m over budget. The place then had to shut again for the toilets to be repaired at a total cost of £90,000.

Diners expect the famous chef to sign books as well as cook - why not cook the books and save time? - and begrudge him having a day off, complaining if he's absent from the kitchen. They don't believe he should have a family life.

Some trainees are equally ungrateful. They continue to reward his faith in them by arriving late and refusing to follow even the most basic instructions. No wonder Oliver's patience is wearing thin at the constant supervision they require. "Everything that went out was great, it was just getting there," he said after another fraught night slaving over a hot stove.

No sign yet of Mr Blair in BBC Scotland's three-part drama The Key, which tells of the Labour movement through three generations of the same family. The action cuts back and forth between the three time zones which, I suspect, will prove off-putting or confusing for viewers used to drama in bite-size pieces with big captions letting them know exactly where they are.

Already the spin doctors are enhancing a New Labour candidate's chances of election by telling her to call herself a lawyer, not an employment lawyer. If Jamie's Kitchen had been around in the late 1990s, they'd probably be lining her up to appear on that as well.

Published: ??/??/2003