Whilst cookery programmes presented by celebrity chefs are currently riding high in the TV ratings, one of Britain’s top cooks has launched a scathing attack on them. Speaking from the kitchen of his restaurant ‘Hootchie Cootchie’s’ in Mill Hill, Percy Lingham told us that he thought the current generation of TV chefs were ‘pretentious pillocks’ who have totally lost touch with real life. “They spend too much time affecting working-class accents and pretending to be ordinary geezers, when they are actually middle class ponces on a massive ego-trip, mincing around the kitchen saying ‘look how macho I am – this antique pepper mill is almost as big as my knob!’” he ranted. “That Jamie Oliver bloke is one of the worst – I mean, he calls himself the naked chef and never gets his kit off – tosser!” Lingham firmly believes that cookery should go back to basics. “Those kitchens they cook in, they’re just too clean, nothing like real kitchens – I blame the health and safety Nazis, they’ve made it all too sterile!” Lingham suspects that his outspoken criticisms have led to him being shunned by television producers. Indeed, many will remember his only appearance on a celebrity edition of the popular Ready, Steady, Cook, where he quickly became drunk on cooking sherry. When he ran out of seasoning, he shocked his celebrity partner, some skinny blonde bint from Holby City, by urinating in the casserole. He then proceeded to stir the soup with his John Thomas after he had mislaid his ladle. “Luckily it wasn’t too hot, or I could have suffered some nasty blistering”, he recalls. Finally, he challenged the other guest chef, manic slap head Ainsley Harriot, to get his banging stick out and see how fast he could ‘whip up a fanny batter’ on hostess Fern Britten. “Everybody goes on about what a whopper he’s got in his pants – personally I reckon he just shoves a cheese grater down there to impress the ladies! I noticed that he wouldn’t get it out when I gave him the chance!” At this point Lingham was ejected from the studio by security guards.

Lingham has tried to put his cookery credo into practice at ‘Hootchie Cootchie’s’ – his kitchen is simple and down-to-earth, with cracked tiles and layers of grease. He eschews the use of modern disinfectants and kitchen cleaners, believing them to be environmentally harmful and “down right unnatural”. The unorthodox gourmet usually cooks in the nude, thereby avoiding any germs from being carried on his clothes. “A few people have complained about finding the odd stray pube in their lasagne but, like I tell them, its all good roughage.” Not everyone appreciates this approach to cookery. “It really isn’t conducive to good dining,” says one former customer. “People were picking his pubes out of their teeth all lunch time.” According to the customer, Lingham’s customer service skills proved to be as lacking as his hygiene, alleging that he witnessed Lingham responding to another diner’s complaint that his steak was under cooked by dropping his pants, crouching over the offending meat and breaking wind, lighting the noxious anal eruption as it burst forth. “He then slapped the still smouldering steak down in front of the customer, asking ‘Is that well done enough for you?’,” he says. “Later, when I asked if he had anything more traditional on his dessert menu – the thought of where the ‘cream’ on his crème brulee might have come from had made me physically ill – he whipped out his plonker, slapped it down on a plate and proceeded to pour red hot custard over it, shouting ‘Anyone for spotted dick?’ Obviously, I was shocked: even by his low standards of wit that was a pretty pathetic joke.” Despite a severely scalded penis, the culinary host still wasn’t finished. “Over coffee he asked if anyone wanted any fruit, then proceeded to remove the seeds from several grapes by inserting them under his foreskin and squeezing, shouting ‘Pip, pip, old boy’ as each pip flew out,” says the still shocked customer, who wishes to remain anonymous, fearing reprisals. “I’ve heard the stories! After one bloke wrote a letter to the local paper complaining about the service he’d got, Lingham offered him a complimentary meal as compensation – little did the poor guy realise, Lingham had earlier kidnapped his dog! The bastard cooked it and served it up to him!”

Lingham shrugs off such stories, believing that most complaints are the result of pretentious customers who expect his cooking to emulate that of other celebrity chefs. “Too many of these celebrity chefs carry on as if they are creating a work of art. I’ve no time for that kind of bollocks”. Lingham is proud of the fact that his restaurant has been closed down by the Environmental Health Agency three times in the last six months – once after a mass outbreak of food poisoning. “They were puking and crapping all over the place!” he informed us. “I blame modern preservatives. That’s the first and last time I use ’em.” Health Inspectors, however, believe that it may have had more to do with Lingham’s using his arse to crimp the pastry on a batch of steak and kidney pies. It isn’t just environmental health inspectors and customers who have been left unimpressed by Lingham’s approach to cuisine, he has also suffered at the hands of Britain’s top food critics. “I really don’t know what their problem is,” he says. “Eventually, I got so fed up with their bloody sniping that I invited a whole load of them to a special dinner party at my restaurant to try and shut them up– I let them inspect the kitchens, the whole bloody lot.” According to one of the guests, this event got off to a bad start. “He was still preparing the food when we arrived – I was amazed when he dropped his trousers and began to crack eggs between the cheeks of his arse,” says Charles Fondlbury, restaurant critic of the Sunday Bystander. “There was raw egg yolk running between his cheeks and all down his legs, bits of cracked eggshell were matted into his pubes and arse hair – surely that can’t be hygienic, I said to myself.” Incredibly, according to Fondlbury, the chef managed to collect some of the yolk in a bowl clutched between his knees and used it to whip up a soufflé. Not surprisingly, there were few takers for this dish amongst the diners. “Mind you, I have to concede that the main courses weren’t too bad,” admits Fondlbury. “Sadly, it all went horribly wrong when dessert arrived – it was chocolate mousse in the shape of a huge turd. Undoubtedly intended as some kind of crass comment upon our hostile reviews, I’m afraid it didn’t go down at all well. In fact, it didn’t stay down. We all regurgitated it very quickly. That said, although it was disgusting, I do feel that Lingham should be congratulated on so perfectly capturing the smell, texture and taste of actual excreta for his mousse. Quite extraordinary.”