Maureen Lipman has hit out at TV cookery shows for "pandering" to the nation’s "obesity crisis".
The ‘Coronation Street’ actress questioned who is cooking up the recipes made by TV chefs apart from "certain bloggers, Nigella Lawson and career vegans", and she branded the grub on such programmes "uncookable food".
She said: "As far as I can see every shop in the high street of every town is a restaurant or a fast food take-away, and every store, library, garage and North Face of the Matterhorn outlet has a sideline in sushi, so who is actually doing all this cooking?
"Other than certain bloggers, Nigella Lawson and career vegans?
"There’s an obesity crisis and television is pandering to it by showing all this uncookable food."
The 73-year-old star – who plays no-nonsense cobbles battleaxe Evelyn Plummer in the ITV soap – insists she switches over channels if a TV cooking show comes on, because she doesn’t want to see celebrity chefs "piling food on top of itself like edible Jenga".
She added to Radio Times magazine: "I turn off Bake Offs, Hairy Bikers, MasterChefs – indeed anything with a hint of a spatula in it.
"I don’t care if it’s nice Nadiya with a mini-whisk, personality-plus Prue with her dangly sherbet earrings or repeats of Gordon out-effing himself, I do not want to eat my frozen meal-for-one in front of any of them.
"They’re dribbling stuff over plates like Jackson Pollock on a lost weekend. They’re piling food on top of itself like edible Jenga.
"They’re mixing and blending in a machine that won’t go in the dishwasher and takes a week to clean, and for whom?"
Maureen’s comments come just four months after she slammed chat shows for being "too smutty", accusing celebrity interview programmes of being "misogynist".
She said: "I will be ‘no-platformed’ from Hogwarts to Hull for saying this, but it’s actually rather misogynist.
"It forces female actors into a predatory role while the male Hollywood actor’s job is to sit in studied rictus, unable to believe such loucheness is allowed on national television.
"Now what matters most in them are the bum, poo, willy, titty references, a sign in my view of the increasing initialisation of TV these days.
"I accept the chat-show format had to change, but the sofa is crammed with English actors telling their juiciest genitalia stories while the host sniggers in a three-piece suit.
"Chocolates are pressed between Hollywood buttocks in the night by one beauty, an Oscar contender recounts placing a sponge between her legs for a sex scene and the show peaks with a ‘relief’ story of self pleasure in a tree from a gay actress in her 70s."
Maureen Lipman hits out at TV cookery shows
