Hugh’s pluck

WITH many of us looking for ways to save money, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is back to remind us of the real cost of cheap meat.

Of course, it isn’t the first time the chef has addressed the issue. Last year, he presented Hugh’s Chicken Run, which saw him tackling the controversial issue of intensive farming to try to raise awareness of just how poultry gets to our plates.

“We basically want to change the way chicken is produced in Britain,” he said at the time. “We think the more people understand, the more they’ll be inclined to upgrade the welfare of the birds that they buy.”

At first, it appeared he was well on his way to achieving this aim, as shocked consumers across Britain choked on their nuggets and rushed out to buy free-range, leaving poultry producers struggling to cope with the demand.

There were a few voices of dissent with some of them coming from within the programme. As part of his campaign, Fearnley-Whittingstall tried to transform Axminster into the UK’s first free-range town. He’s the first to admit the project met with mixed results.

“We had a lot of very strong support and some very significant changes in the way the town shopped. But, at the same time, there was something of a backlash from people who didn’t like to be made to feel guilty about the kind of food they were eating,” he says.

As this follow-up documentary finds out, it wasn’t just the odd disgruntled Axminster resident who refused to give up their cheap chickens. The revolution also appears to have bypassed many of Britain’s supermarkets, who refuse to talk to the chef about welfare, despite the evidence that it’s something their customers care about.

Unfortunately for the retailers, Fearnley- Whittingstall isn’t about to give up without a fight. Here, he tries to change the system from within by becoming a Tesco shareholder and trying to raise the issue at its annual meeting.

It wasn’t just the supermarkets which were unhappy with the original series. He also fell foul of Charles Bourns, the National Farmers Union’s head of poultry, who criticised it in the press.

The chef meets him to persuade him they are actually fighting a common enemy – the supermarket price wars which Fearnley-Whittingstall believes are driving producers out of business.

Can he persuade him that free-range is good for farmers as well as chickens?

One problem the presenter wasn’t facing last time was the credit crunch. Worried that consumers increasingly feel they can’t afford to shop ethically, he meets up again with Hayley, the Axminster mum who last time round refused to give up her cheap broilers.

Hugh hopes he can provide a third way and convince her, and any other sceptical viewers, that there might be a compromise between pricey, free-range organic birds and battery farm meat.

Horizon (BBC2, 9pm)

WHY, the programme wonders, are some people able to eat as much as they like without becoming obese? And how do they do it?

Ten volunteers eat double their normal intake of calories over four weeks to see how their bodies cope with a month-long chocolate, cake and fast-food frenzy.

It’s inspired by a 1967 experiment on Vermont State Prison inmates, in which medical researcher Ethan Simms recruited a group of prisoners to eat as much as they could until they had gained an extra 25 per cent of their original body weight.

The reward was early release. Despite eating up to 10,000 calories per day, only six of the nine who took part succeeded.

Movie Connections (BBC1, 10.35pm)

LONG before Slumdog Millionaire won him a Golden Globe, Danny Boyle impressed with thriller, Shallow Grave. That put Ewan McGregor on the map and proved Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and writer John Hodge were a force to be reckoned with.

Following that success, the trio could have packed their bags and set up camp in Hollywood. However, they decided to stay put and adapt Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh’s cult novel about Scottish heroin addicts.

In the programme, the leading actors, as well as Boyle and Welsh, give their thoughts on one of the most controversial and talked about films of the Nineties.