When it comes to judging how far we've come down the road from the class-bound, hierarchical Britain of yore to the golden New Labour meritocracy we've been promised, forget think-tanks and colum-inches; just take a long hard look at BBC2's Masterchef, having first turned the sound down - unless you want the last thing you ever hear without tinnitus to be, "cooking does not get tougha dan dis (you slaaaag)".
I frequently find my public sector hackles rising at what that strange show's victims, nay, contestants, nay, kitchen porters of tomorrow, are made to do. I'm not talking about getting to grips with cooking food - if that's not too vulgar a term - to a very high standard; serving bleeding and bleating meat to avoid the risk of its being a tad dry; and giving their meagre morsels of salivatory delight names that would make a beat-poet scratch his noggin - anyone for mezzanine of korfballed pike in a bitumen of drizzled sarin?
Instead, I'm talking about the constant, buttock-clenching, lip-biting degredation and kowtowing forced on these saps by the presenters' swaggering, inquisitorial style. Many programmes are padded out with pointless soundbites - take Dragons' Den and its pointless narrator's need to repeat the bleeding obvious for the hard of thinking (the blogger just said that Dragons' Den's expert analyst repeats the bleeding obvious to give cherished viewers extra insight) - but this is worse.
Knowing how to cook is just not enough for these sadists. Blue-chip interview questions, usually flung at the little chefs while they're busy chastising scallops, have to be fielded, and fielded out of the park, even if their flatulence of sulky yak liver and distressed onion jus is the closest thing to organic ambrosia these gourmands have ever supped. Unless the little chefs are prepared to say they are the best and destined to win, which is, given the level of competition, at best hubris and at worst a desperate, frightened lie, they're plainly lacking the ambition they'd need to hack it in a professional kitchen. If they can't persuade mein hosts that they'd skewer and lightly braise their own immediate family for Raymond Blanc's amusement and force-feed their flesh to an expectant Westminster lunch service, they are the professional equivalent of a sputum garnish on a coulis of frisky calf a la Max Boyce.
I'll concede that there's a bit more to it than that. Force-feeding the little chefs expectation and then stewing them in an emotional pressure cooker makes the tearful disappointment most of them will face all the sweeter for the audience; but that's another debate.
In short, it is not enough for them to be good at what they do unless they can regurgitate stylised chaff when asked questions whose only real purpose is to justify the interviewers' existence and put them in their place. On Masterchef and in many workplaces, this approach legitimises a thoroughly modern model of cap-in-hand, forelock-tugging begging and pleading for your job. It is degredation for entertainment, a test of conformity as well as competence. Where, I ask you, is Amnesty in all this?
Perhaps it struck a chord because I've had a few interviews in the public sector, all of which only tested my ability and willingness to say the right thing on the day and thereby conform to the interviewer's agenda. I don't claim that this is telltale of a conformist and intellectually craven culture which values saying the right thing more than doing it; I'll leave that for Flaming Cross. I'm just suggesting that being loudly and farcically 'on message' matters far too much in our supposedly restless, democratic culture.
After all, do I care about a Tanvic mechanic's willingness to embrace automotive corporacy and facilitate an enhanced customer expectation matrix, or is it enough that my new brake pads and discs work when I leave the M1 at 90mph in the expectation that I'll enter the Little Chef (the dining experience, not a failed contestant) on my feet rather than in the hurtling shell of my unresponsive car?
I almost included The Apprentice in this piece, but realised I didn't mind its contestants being degraded.