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Anybody else thing he's strangely sexy? I like his funny hair and eccentric ways.

I downloaded his chicken run thing and am about half way through. Not the greatest morality guilt trip ever, although I've decided chickens are pretty ace. If I had a bigger garden I'd have some as pets. And then I'd eat them.

hes great

I wish I lived at the original River Cottage

i used to intensely dislike him but i've grown to respect him actually. i haven' seen his chicken run programme, i heard him on 5live t'other morning briefly though - might grab it off uknova.

It's ok, not brilliant. He never really properly gets over the cost issue of the free range chickens. The free range ones do look ace and more happy.

i watched one of his shows where he put a silly amount of birds of an ever decreasing size inside one another and then cooked them. looked fucking tasty.

What cost issue? Chickens shouldn't be £5 for two, simple as that - the results are awful for everyone invovled; farmer; birds; consumers - except the supermarkets. They win.  

And with a good quality chicken you can actually eat the rest (offal) that you wouldn't on a 'standard' bird and make stock/soup from the remains.

Okay so I'm the converted that he's preaching to but hopefully the programme and Jamie 'hypocrite' Oliver tonight will do some good.

PS, The River Cottage Meat book is great. It's expensive but its got lots of really good receipes.

Easy mr rant face.

I don't really disagree with you, I was saying that he doesn't really handle it very well. He backs down quite a lot.

He never commented on his chickens being expensive because that wasn't the issue.  He didn't want people to buy the free range chickens from his shop.

According to the programme the average cost of a free range chicken was around £1 more expensive than a standard.

Personally I thought it was a good 3 parter and I will try my utmost to only buy free range chickens from now on, don't like the idea of those red marks (hocks or burns) you see on the legs of standard chickens being caused by the fact they have to stand in their own piss and shit for 39 days.

In this day and age there is no need for animals to be treated like that.

I do have to say though Hugh getting upset about killing some poorly chickens 2 days before they were due to go to slaughter seemed a little like crocodile tears to me.  As one local in the pub said (on the programme)

"If you don't like it, then don't eat the fucking twatting things, become a vegetarian"

And now of course the whole thing might be a bit academic as the government announced this week that it was due to set a timetable for a ban on battery chicken farming.

I don't know whether channel four will be delighted that there bit of campaigning looks like it was successful, or pissed off that the announement came in the middle of the week, slightly undercutting the climax to the whole thing tonight.

I wan't really bothered about his own shop thing, that didn't really have much to do with anything.

It was more the way that he never really stuck to any consistant prices for comparison. One minute he was going on about the terrible 2 for a fiver, but then he'd compare a price of £3 something to £5 something, then it would be an average of a pound more, then 50p each for a family of 4. It jumped all over the place.

It was like he hadn't done any proper research and was basing it all anecdotally.

It's easy to go around saying "they shouldn't be that cheap anyway, so it doesn't mater blah blah", but then if the price does matter to someone then straight away you're coming across as a bit arrogant. You may be right but it's the wrong way to go about it if you want people to change.

I think he would have been better off extending the collective responsibility thing by banging home the more demand would mean lower prices.

Over all it was pretty good. The supermarkets didn't come across great, and I would have liked to have seen him slating them more. As he hinted throughout though, it wouldn't have helped as he really needed them on board. Would have made better telly though.

And he really should have called that Martin an arsehole, because he was.  I can't stand supermarket managers, ever since I worked at Somerfield for a while.

Apart from the Provencale Daube that we tried yesterday - tastes of clove and orange flavoured arse - ended up making a chili from the meat.  Now that WAS good.

My friends live next to his gran who is a mentalist. She leaves them messages on there door like "I have two frogs which will bring down communism"! It’s true!

He lives less than 5 miles from me and despite what he says he does shop in Tesco as I have seen him there, not Axminster but Chard Tesco.

Hes a genuine bloke and has time for everyone that wants a chat, top bloke.