The new Jamie Oliver series

Last night I saw the trailer for the new Jamie Oliver series, Jamie’s American Road Trip. The show features as the name suggests Jamie Oliver travelling and cooking in the US. The advert for the show has him dressed up as all six characters from the Village People. If you are too young or just not familiar with the Village People it would not be an understatement to say that they did not dress conservatively. I will leave it you to Google them if you are that interested in how they looked. It is good to see that Jamie Oliver can still laugh at himself.

I don’t know if the Americans will take to Jamie’s personality. Besides filming this show he has also spent a considerable amount of time over the ‘pond’ working on building the ‘Jamie Oliver’ brand.

In this country he is almost as well known for his campaign to improve school dinners, change unhealthy diets and cooking habits as he is as a chef. To some extent he was fortunate in that his ‘rise’ corresponded with people becoming more conscious about their food, the so called rise of the ‘foodie’. This was the time when chefs became media personalities, one newspaper even making the claim that “cooking was the new rock ‘n’ roll”.

It is interesting as a cookware retailer to see the effect a chef having a new television series can have on the particular chefs own cookware ranges. Although there have only been adverts for the new show so far we have already noticed an increase in activity on the Jamie Oliver Cookware pages of our website. This has helped raise the profiles the two ranges that he launched last month, the Jamie Oliver Knife Range and the Jamie Oliver Tools Range. There has definitely been an increased interest in Jamie Oliver branded cookware, as well as an increase in sales. This proves that Jamie Oliver still has the ability to inspire people to be more adventurous in their cooking, which has got be a good thing?