dark beige

Last time we heard from Kerry Katona about her love of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

http://darkbeige.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-favourite-movie-with-kerry-katona.html

This time, much-loved celebrity chef, healthy eating champion and oversized-tongue afflictant Jamie Oliver tells us about his passion for classic 80s comedy The Secret of My Success.



What you do is, grab one part Brantley Foster, a recent graduate from the sticks who moves to New York where he has landed a job as a financier. Chuck in a little conflict when upon arriving, the poor feller discovers the company he's supposed to work for has been taken over by a rival, and Brantley is slung out on his ear!

Leave things to simmer as after several unsuccessful attempts to get another job (mostly because the geezer's overqualified), he ends up working in the mailroom of the company owned by his uncle, Howard Prescott, a bit like how my old man gave me a break in his Essex boozer.

Turn up the heat under things when upon inspecting company reports, Brantley realizes that Prescott and most of his fellow "suits" (executives) are making ineffective and/or non-beneficial decisions - a bit like how I noticed Sainsburys weren't pushing their Be Good to Yourself range with enough gusto.

After Brantley notices an empty office in the building, due to one of Howard's frequent firings, he assumes the identity of Carlton Whitfield, a new executive, just as I assumed the mantle of Naked Chef.

Now take that pan of simmering entertainment and shove it in the oven as all round great bloke Brantley also falls head-over-heels for Christy Wills, a tasty bird from Harvard.

Things get a bit rum when his uncle, without Brantley's knowledge, is having an affair with Christy. When this wanker asks her to spy on whizzkid Carlton Whitfield, Christy falls head-over-heels for Carlton, not knowing he is actually Brantley, as this geezer's got patter fresher than the ripest Somerset tomatoes!



Exhausted yet? This plot has more layers than one of my famous trifles! The Pemrose Corporation is preparing to merge with the infamous Davenport Corporation. Prescott, unaware that Whitfield and Brantley are one and the same person, suspects Carlton is a spy for uber-liquidator Donald Davenport.

In the end, after about 80 minutes in the oven of fun, Brantley and Vera raise enough cash, bonds, and stocks to wrest ownership of the Pemrose Corporation from Prescott, and to buy out the Davenport Corporation as well.

Vera, already contemptuous of Howard for his counter-productive business practices, which were driving her father's empire into the ground, learns that Prescott has been cheating on her to boot. She promptly replaces him with Brantley. While security guards escort Howard and his aide, Art Thomas from the Pemrose Building, Brantley and Christy start planning their future together, personal as well as professional! Those geezers have earned themselves a free range bacon and egg butty - chez moi!

Phew! After all that fun I ain't got room for dessert!