Having just watched the new Jamie Oliver program (Jamie’s Ministry of Food) on channel 4, as he attempted to teach the people of Rotherham in Yorkshire how to cook, I was struck by an amusing thought.

For those of you that didn’t watch it,  Jamie goes to Rotherham  (a typical English city but with the highest growing rate of obesity in the UK) and tries to teach a group of less-affluent people that eat nothing but junk food, to cook some basic recipes. They’ll then teach another 2 friends the recipes, and so on and so on until everyone in Rotherham can cook!

One of the opening scenes was of a single mother and her 5 year old daugher, eating Doner kebab meat and chips with cheese from a styrofoam container whilst sitting on the floor! The girl was on benefits of around £80 per week, with which she had to feed her child and pay all the bills for their modest house.

Now, whilst I do admire Mr. Oliver for having the guts to show his face amongst some of the poorest people in the country and offer his help them to cook, he did this whilst driving around in a new Range Rover! I can’t help but feel that this was a little bit distasteful to the locals, as it could be seen to be a bit vulgar.

If the producers of the show wanted to portray Jamie in a more sympathetic light, he should have been given a K reg Vauxhall Frontera 2.0 that dripped oil and antifreeze wherever it was parked. That way, he’s have had a taste of the kind of car that the very people he was teaching could barely dream of owning!

To put it into perspective, let’s assume that Jamie’s Range Rover was the mid-range TDV8 3.6 model that costs a reasonable £63495 on the road. A single mum on £80 per week from the DSS would have to save her entire benefits (without spending a penny) for 15.3 years to buy a similar car!

Now, these big 4×4’s lose SO much value in a year, that if Jamie traded his in when it was 12 months old, he’s be lucky to get £28000 for it. That’s a loss of an incredible £35495, or 8.5 years of benefits at £80 per week!

As you can see, poor old Jamie stands to lose a lot of money every time he buys a new Range Rover and yet I struggle to feel sympathy for him. He probably gets them free from the manufacturer just to give them some much-needed publicity in these times of credit-crunching.

In the meantime, if Jamie want’s to feel a little less conspicous whilst driving around the mean streets of Rotherham, I’ve got a lovely P-reg Isuzu Trooper he can buy for £1500.00!

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