Speech of the Month, March 2023 - Andi Oliver

A long time ago I tired of the ‘one goes home’ format of shows like Strictly, The Apprentice, Sewing Bee etc but I’ve yet to weary of The Great British Menu – but then it’s more of a ‘one goes through’ format. I enjoy seeing the dishes the chefs effortlessly turn out that I’d need ten years at cookery school to attempt, I like hearing the judges critique the food - though who knew lovely, cuddly Tom Kerridge could be such a bitch? I like predicting the scores but mostly, I love checking out what Andi Oliver is wearing. Yet, as arresting as she is on the eye, she doesn’t upstage the show with her style or her personality. In fact, she’s an engaging presenter because her interest is completely in the chefs and the food, not herself. 

If The Great British Menu has escaped you, here she is talking about it.

And here’s why I rate her as a presenter…

She keeps it real

On MasterChef, if a contestant is running behind Gregg Wallace stares at them, eyes bulging, as if they’ve just said something impossibly obscene; and if a contestant puts an unorthodox ingredient into a dish, he turns swiftly to John Torode and they exchange such an incredulous, horrified look that you’d think they’d sprinkled arsenic into the meringue mix. All silly over-reaction to turn up the drama dial and create some false jeopardy. 

Oliver, however, doesn’t deal in any of this nonsense that’s become the norm. If a chef asks for more time, she usually says, “no problem” and if he does something surprising, she greets it with open-minded interest. It’s this adultness, this determination to be herself and not behave in a way that’s expected in the world of telly that makes her fresh and all the more compelling. 

Note to us all – be yourself. Don’t do what’s expected if it’s naff or tired and / or causing you discomfort. 

She gives good feedback

Unlike, say, Katherine Ryan who presents 'All the Glitters', Oliver is an expert in the cookery field. This means she’s able to give contestants feedback that they can trust and respect. How’s Ryan going to advise a would-be jeweller on his platinum soldering technique? 

But giving feedback publicly and doing it well is an art. If you don’t give honest feedback for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, then none of your feedback can be trusted and the room loses respect for you. However, if you’re too honest and end up embarrassing someone, you hold onto your credibility but at the expense of your likeability – and who wants to be disliked?

Oliver gets around this problem by giving negative feedback in an undramatic and unpatronising way while stressing the good elements of a person’s performance and how the necessary tweaks would accentuate those good elements. Nobody is ever bruised by her feedback. 

She sounds lovely

Some people just have great voices, don’t they? They could read the phonebook (although they’d struggle to find one these days) and we’d be gripped. 

Oliver was a singer before she became a chef so that might explain why her spoken voice has the rich, resonant tone and strength that it does. That said, it doesn't always follow that good singers have great speaking voices and vice versa: Paloma Faith isn’t easy on the ear when she’s speaking, meanwhile Mariella Frostrup can’t sing for toffee. But I imagine Oliver probably belts out a few numbers as she preps her veg and sauces, and singing does keep the spoken voice in good condition.  So, whenever you’re in the car on your own, use the opportunity to hit a few notes, in or out of tune. 

Incidentally, I frequently listen to Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast. Oliver has featured as a guest and hearing her describe how her singing career tanked as that of her best friend, Neneh Cherry’s, soared was very affecting. I suspect that, having experienced failure so keenly and felt the all-encompassing despair that it brings, this is why she’s always decent with contestants on the GBM.  

Back to her voice though, there’s something about it that’s completely classless. If you listened to a 10 second clip of her, you wouldn’t be able to say where she hails from or guess her education. For a British presenter, this is truly unique. This classlessness adds to her accessibility. But I’m not sure a classless voice is ever consciously achievable, sadly.