Hey cooks, we're not rock stars

Marco Pierre White... 'It could be a true Rock' roll chef. But even Marco now spends his dotage pheasant shooting and flogging stock cubes. ? Photo: Geoff Wilkinson/Rex Features

When I was eight years old, my mother presented me with a clarinet. Is that a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a clarinet will remain resolutely virginal, until he went to the University. A clarinet is the least sexy of all instruments, beloved person's favorite sex symbol, Acker Bilk. It is absolutely not as Rock 'n' roll. Not a single bit. Get guitarists as the hot groupies and snort crack off macaques shaved; clarinetists have a nice cup of tea with your nan.

To strengthen my lack of rock 'n' roll credentials, I had to Google "can you snort crack", fear that more pedantic A class drug users among you attack this piece for factual inaccuracy. It turns out that you can. As if someone has ever snorted it on the back of a shaved monkey, Wikipedia remains fuzzy.

My point is that leadership and Rock 'n' roll are not as synonyms like many chefs, PR people and agents these days above would believe you. Have a tattoo doesn't make you Tommy Lee anymore that it makes you a Maori tribal elder.

I was recently sent an email announcing gasping: "heads of five star, four unique dinners, an elegant hotel - Alyn Williams presents CHEFstock 2013."

CHEFstock 2013? Really? Do you think that this is the legacy that the organizers of Woodstock had in mind? A ￡180 menu tasting at a chic hotel in Mayfair? Williams is a prodigious and obviously Cook a nice chap, but why oh why do we sell food as if it was a music festival in a field? We are told to "Book early to avoid disappointment" as if it was the last performance of the Rolling Stones.

There could be a real Rock 'n' roll chef: Marco Pierre White. Marco was a real rock star - hair, wild-eyed, the genius of outbreak and prodigious destruction madness, the glorious photos White Heat, cheekbones all slurs and fury. But even Marco devotes now its dotage pheasant shooting and flogging of the bouillon cubes. You can imagine, say, Johnny Rotten selling out like that, you can? Oh.

If protege of Marco, shouty Gordon Ramsay, had by the rock-star credentials, they have been eviscerated by his performance extremely cringeworthy on Desert Island Discs. Can you imagine a less Rock 'n' roll list than this? If it were any more beige, it would be the hummus.

And CHEFstock is not the only offender in this area. There's The Big Feastival (geddit) - the brainchild of Saint Jamie Oliver and Alex James, inventor of the Tikka Masala Cheddar cheese. The setting is closed James in Oxfordshire. Tickets cost ￡60 per day for this "Festival of music, food and fun", with its "small den dudes" starring the likes of Peppa Pig. OK, the Peppa Pig thing, I can get behind. But are we leaders truly worthy of this idea of Madonna style microphone and big Rock 'n' roll platform?

This may seem a strange position for a professional chef's demonstration of take-full disclosure: I work at the demonstration kitchen in Borough market. But it is an intimate configuration, being more in the sense of a pleasant conversation while I Cook, followed by everyone eat the food that I cooked (usually while I have a serenade them with the clarinet Classics). It really isn't a "show".

We chefs need to calm down a bit. With big TV contracts comes great responsibility. It is just cooking, after all. My sincere wish is that the next fad of gourmands is less about the head and more info on the client. Marco was once - it had powers to remove. A large part of the thing 'head like a rock star' at the moment reminds me of the poor little Frankie thinking Cocozza is Keith Richards while simultaneously being the only thing human memory less Rock 'n' roll than me and my clarinet con.

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