Love him or loathe him (and actually this Londonist thinks he’s great fun), you’ve gotta admit that our Gordon’s a hard grafter. Hey, he’s everywhere – telly, glossy supplements…and the other day he was even trying to get into your kitchen. Having hobnobbed with young Jamie Oliver on the Big Food Fight, he’s now following the affable Essex one’s lead and trying to raise the, um, steaks on the hospitality training front. He reckons that......

It’s Christmas Eve already? How did that happen? Surely you’re all done your shopping now, so time to reward yourself with a few nice things to watch on TV. On TV, Londonist likes: Jamie at Home Christmas Special (Channel 4, 17:10-18:15) Say what you will about Jamie Oliver, he puts on an entertaining cooking show. And we’re guessing this Christmas episode will be chock full of amazing dishes that will look incredibly simple and......

Because schools aren't violent enough: Boxing is being reintroduced in several schools to help pupils develop their mental and physical skills. Of course! Nothing like the risk of a good old fashioned brain injury to increase fist to eye co-ordination. The director of sport at Beckenham's Kelsey Park Sports College, Matthew Strange, believes there could be a place for boxing within the national curriculum "due to the massive impact it can have on those......

Boris is at it again. This time four gaffes in just a few hours at the Tory party conference. Gaffe one! "If I was in charge I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like... Mothers have been driven to pushing pies through fences. The solution is not to provide healthy stuff." He later claimed he had been misinterpreted, "The BBC are completely wrong, what I said was......

The London Assembly is pondering what's going on with London's allotments. The Environment Committee is apparently going to look into whether allotments are disappearing to make way for things such as the Olympic Village in Stratford. With luck, they might even suggest what to do about it, because it'll be a little disappointing if the outcome of their investigation was 'Yup, they're disappearing,' and they left it at that. The timing is fortuitous (ok,......

Vegetarians on the Londonist staff are in the minority, but we'd be amiss not to mention National Vegetarian Week that kicks off today with the double entendre tagline Can You Keep it up for a Week?! Normally when we have a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch we try our best not to picture an erect penis, but the Vegetarian Society thinks that this will "generate lots of press interest – humorous or otherwise!".......

The redevelopment of Stansted airport has "slipped" and already accusations of blame have started flying about between the airlines and the developers. The redevelopment was supposed to ease the congestion currently suffered by Gatwick and Heathrow by doubling Stansted's traffic. Completion of a new runway was supposed to happen in 2011 but that's probably not going to happen now until 2013, and it could get worse unless some money is raised fast (i.e. by......

Are Reebok glamorising gun crime? Lucy Cope of Southwark believes so and has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding an advertisement featuring 50 cent. Mrs Cope's son was shot dead outside a London club three years ago and she considers the current Reebok advertising campaign "disgusting". The ads in question show the rapper counting up to nine - this is apparently a reference to him being shot nine times and not, as Londonist......

The PM spent a portion of this morning sitting in Buckingham Palace asking the Queen to dissolve Parliament, perhaps nibbling a Mr Kipling's Fondant Fancy (or if you're a fan of David Icke, dancing naked in the guts of small children and laughing about the success of their reptilian plot to do away with Princess Di). Either way, the important thing now is that the election is ON! May 5th is the date to......

Guy Ritchie, that Jamie Oliver of the film world and current Mr. Madonna, has fallen foul of the Catholic Church. It seems that last Thursday Guy and Madge (now known as Esther) were out in London celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim. Catholics are not best pleased that the couple decided to go to a Kabbalah bash dressed as the Pope and a nun. Madge/Esther/whatever seems to enjoy prickling the Catholic Church, but as......

We didn't catch all of Jamie Oliver's School Dinners, but then we've never been able to stomach one of his Sainsbury's ads all the way through never mind a TV show. Nevertheless, the faux cockney has done the country a great service by finally getting the government to sit up and take notice of the appalling state of school dinners. Remember The Simpsons episode when we found out that Bart and his school chums......

Daily Mail readers may want to skip this post as it contains French people succeeding where the English are failing, and worse, they're doing it in close proximity to impressionable school children. French Chef Francois Nouaillat has revolutionised the dinner menu at the Osidge primary school in Southgate, replacing processed food with far more nutritional freshly prepared fare, all for the same £1.70 per student budget. Which all sounds suspiciously like a certain TV......

Londonist has been preparing Christmas dinner for our family for several years now, so we like to think we're a dab hand in the kitchen. (It also gives us plenty of scope for ogling Nigella without feeling too guilty.) We usually prefer Nigel Slater's approach to cooking, which is pitched somewhere between Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. Whereas Oliver can come across as a bit too cheffy (despite the supposed 'nakedness' of his cooking)......

With clockwork-like predictability the Madame Tussaud's 'celebrity nativity' scene has "sparked controversy" in both media and church circles today. The Times is calling for Tussaud's to apologise and to melt down the offending waxworks. While a much stronger response was forthcoming from the official spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: "Deary, deary me." Harsh words there from the church (you can almost see him reaching for a comforting slice of Battenberg when......

Firstly, may we apologise for the God-awful pun, we're still trying to come up with a suitably witty and catchy title for our new, weekly TV review (any ideas please let us know in the comments section).   Mecca Ibrahim is the author of One Stop Short Of Barking - Uncovering the London Underground and is also a practised TV critic (see her critique of Londonist favourite Jamie Oliver), so she was the obvious......