CAN you believe that the Great British Menu is still limping along on BBC2?

It feels as though the celebrity chefs have been competing to prepare a dish for the Queen since Christmas and there's no sign of it coming to an end for a good while yet.

The idea is the winner will prepare a banquet to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday. The poor woman will be 81 and starving by the time they get round to deciding.

If it wasn't bad enough having to see the various regional heats, each involving two top chefs who then qualify for an all too distant final.

Somehow the Beeb manages to make each heat last for an entire week.

I timed last night's programme (sad I know but it was all in the interests of research).

Out of a half hour programme the amount of time spent on actually cooking was around 12 minutes.

The rest sees Jenny Bond twittering around the kitchen, little films of the chefs sourcing their ingredients and various recaps for those people who have the attention span of a gnat.

The only interesting thing to come out of the programmes so far is quite how bitchy and competitive these top chefs are.

This week we've got Gary Rhodes proving as spiky as his haircut decrying his opponent for not cooking British food.

All good fun but quite why we have to watch them preparing a course a night and then have to wait until the end of the week to discover who has won is beyond me.

Can't they stick them all in one big kitchen, film it live over an hour and have done with it?