Oliver attacks UK booze culture

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In an interview with French magazine Paris Match, the celebrated cook suggests that people in the UK care too much about getting drunk and not enough about eating well.

He goes on to say that there is a better variety of food in the slums of South Africa than in English towns and cities.

The comments come on the back of a controversial "joke" about the holocaust made by Oliver at last week's Edinburgh International Television Conference. The 33-year-old chef remarked on the high number of complaints from Germans about the gassing of chicks during his Jamie's Fowl Dinners show.

Now Oliver has turned his attentions to the state of British cuisine and eating habits.

Commenting on the fact that 80% of British people do not sit around a table for dinner, he said: "It's true in London and in the big cities of the north. It is connected to the new poverty.

"England is one of the richest countries in the world. The people I'm talking about have enormous televisions - a lot bigger than my own - the latest in mobile phones, cars and they go and get drunk in pubs at the weekend.

"Their poverty shows in the way they feed themselves." He added: "I found the cooking of people living in the slums of Soweto more diverse than ours."

Oliver notes that a culture of alcohol exists in England. "The only people who drink more than us are the Irish and the Scottish," he said.

The chef also bemoaned the demise of British cuisine when compared to that of France: "We used to do fabulous dishes, but that is in the past. Contrary to you, we have lost our traditions."