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Five terrible meals that make men think they should be on Masterchef

TODAY’S men see cooking not as a dull chore for women, but an opportunity to prove their masculine brilliance. They would do these traditional bloke dishes on Masterchef:

Spaghetti bolognese with loads of cheese

The testosterone-inspired culinary classic. A man will boil the spaghetti until just about to dissolve, fry some cheap mince, add watery tinned tomatoes and serve with a mountain of grated Cheddar in the traditional Italian style. The best bloke chefs add a a splash of Worcestershire sauce you can’t actually taste, firmly believing this elevates it to the level of the finest haute cuisine.

Egg and chips

Does exactly what it says on the tin. They wish it did come in a tin – there’d be less washing-up for the wife to do. They’re thoughtful like that. Call it ‘oeuf et chips’ and it’d get a Michelin star. Wankers.

A proper recipe, f**ked up

Could be moussaka, coq au vin or lamb rogan josh. The common factor is that it will be extremely ineptly cooked, so a huge amount of effort for something not very nice. A man will spend hours, if not days, putting it together, but forget to do basic things like brown the meat. Then he’lll serve it with great ceremony, expecting constant praise and possibly a blowjob later. Now all you need to do is hire a JCB to clear the vast pile of dirty and burnt dishes and pans and you’ll be able to use the kitchen again.

Pork scratchings sandwich

Follow closely or you’ll get it wrong. Two slices of bread and butter. Add a generous helping of pork scratchings. Take out any with a pig’s nipple on them. Those will put you off them for life. Eat. 

Bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, hash browns, mushrooms, black pudding, kidneys, fried bread, ketchup, four slices of bread and butter

Courgettes and lemon zest on a bed of rocket salad are no match for this grease-laden big boy. Rather high in calories and saturated fats? Sure, but he’ll burn it off with masculine activities like sitting at a computer. The great thing about a breakfast like this is it keeps you going. You won’t have to eat for another 12 weeks. 

90s pop classics which were total bollocks with hindsight

PEOPLE are fond of claiming the 1990s produced some of the greatest pop music of all time. Which falls on its arse when you recall these piles of total wank from the genre.

Shampoo – Trouble (1994) 

Hailed by the music press as ‘perfect pop’, there’s a good reason duo Jacqui Blake and Caroline Askew were around for all of five minutes. Their two-dimensional brand of watery rebel-pop was a bit too knowing and ironic, and the result was a shorter shelf-life than last night’s prawn curry leftovers. ‘Something’s come along and its burst our bubble’ was, thankfully, deeply prophetic.

Britney Spears – Baby One More Time (1998) 

The Swedish songwriters behind this mega-hit confused ‘hit me’ with ‘hit me up’, so Britney’s not actually recommending repeatedly hitting a 16-year-old girl in a revealing school uniform. That doesn’t address the other problem, which is that it’s being sung by a 16-year-old girl in a revealing school uniform. Now seen as a wank track for dirty old men in raincoats, so wokeness does have its purposes.

Simply Red – Something Got Me Started (1991) 

The commercial success of bland wine bar pop merchants Simply Red is one of life’s great mysteries, like what’s at the end of space, or how Britain has managed to keep electing transparently shit Tory governments for 14 years. ‘I’d give it all up for you,’ warbles chubby ginger novelty troll Hucknall. Yeah, if you could mate, that’d be great.

Sub Sub – Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) (1993) 

Madchester and The Hacienda have a lot to answer for. Supremely catchy, but then so is syphilis, and no one ever talks about ‘classic VD’. Had a mercifully short career before Jimi Goodwin and the Williams brothers definitely didn’t burn their Manchester recording studio down and use the insurance money to launch the infinitely superior Doves.

Kylie Minogue – Better The Devil You Know (1990) 

Hugely popular, even though it was just the latest in a brainless procession of identical Stock, Aitken and Waterman detritus. Great if you like songs that go  ‘oo-oh, oo-oh, oo-oh, o-oh’ when they’ve run out of vaguely-connected sentences to call ‘lyrics’. Mainly heard nowadays being slaughtered by out-of-tune hen party revellers in karaoke bars who leave other drinkers in fear of getting punched or snogged or both.

S Club Seven – S Club Party (1999) 

S Club Seven were a synthetic creation of Simon Fuller in the badly mistaken belief he could recreate the financial success of the Spice Girls. If there really ‘Ain’t no party like an S Club Party’ we should all be eternally grateful, because it would be full of pissed teenagers vomiting alcopops. Sadly the comeback tour won’t happen now, but it does solve the awkward problem of what to play after the two hits people liked when they were ten.

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