Let’s do lunch…

So Emma might be missing her daily Loose Women fixture but currently I am enjoying its summer replacement Let’s Do Lunch… with Gino and Mel.

On the face of it is just another daytime cookery programme with a celebrity guest promoting whatever they are doing at the moment.

However, Italian chef Gino D’Acampo brings a cheekiness that makes it instantly watchable. For instance he started Wednesday’s show by discussing how he was intimidated by bush which led to the audience stifling giggles.

He was in fact talking about his fear of eating stinging nettles for one feature of the show where Gino was challenged by the World Champion stinging nettle eater.

These hilarious accidental slips from what is expected from daytime television do not happen every once in a while you know it is only five minutes until there is another incident where Gino might, because of his accent, mispronounces sheet as shit and peas as piss.

If this was any other chef, for example Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver, it would be disregarded as smut but because it is Gino his looks and his supposed naivety when it comes to understanding the English language make him adorable to the predominantly female audience.

Although I have seen him on Keith Lemon’s Celebrity Juice and he definitely does keep himself clean for his role on This Morning.

It is all left to Mel Sykes to make the programme understandable for when everything does go too bizarre and the show needs someone to make it normal or for someone to talk to the camera when Gino gets distracted flirting with someone in the audience.

There is one thing that is slightly off putting for a lunch time show – Gino is challenged to break a world challenge. Today it was to eat an onion in under 43 seconds in order to break the World Guinness record. And safe to say after watching three people attempt to eat raw onion I will not be eating my lunch with Gino and Mel just right now…