Jamie Oliver’s pulped fiction brings shame on British publishers

Jamie Oliver
Jamie Oliver’s latest tome, Billy and the Epic Escape, should not have been withdrawn from sale - Joe Giddens/PA Wire

I have in my hands a rare thing. Not an unsigned one, as the old gag goes, but even rarer: an un-pulped one.

For there we’ve been, myself and the oldest of my second crop of children (he’s six) on his bed in the evening reading. It’s a weighty tome but with lots of pictures and endless action. It’s been a break from the norm; a diet of Roald Dahl, The Famous Five, a lot of Paddington and Just William, the latter to which we howl with laughter.

And while he’s quite enjoyed it, I’ve struggled. For Jamie Oliver’s latest tome, Billy and the Epic Escape, does not perform that trick of the greatest of children’s book authors and engage both grown-up and kid. But, then again, I don’t think Roald Dahl ever knocked up a blinding peri peri chicken. Renaissance men are a rarity in this world, so for this Jamie Oliver, chef, restaurateur and campaigner, can be forgiven.

But as we neared the end of the book, news came that what we thought was a safe bedtime adventure turns out to be an atrocious insult, a book of outrageous offence, of gross insensitivity and reckless ignorance.

For there, within those pages, was written something so dire that the book had suddenly been withdrawn from books shops in this country and around the world. Shelves and tables were cleared, vans dispatched to collect the dastardly tomes and great piles in warehouses were removed. Pulped presumably, and then I trust, as Jamie has his finger on the pulse of sustainability, used to help ferment the night soil of developing countries or as fuel to power the schools of the underprivileged.

What was this transgression, this appalling act of insensitivity? And how on earth could it have come from the pen of a guy quite so nice as Jamie?

And how could I, a sucker for a nice bit of outrage, have missed it? The offence I discovered came from a chapter called ‘To Steal a Child’, in which one of hero Billy’s friends, Anna, through some sort of portal, fetches up in Australia in the company of the book’s archnemesis Scary Red – a tall and willowy sort of evil Queen. Scary Red enters a community centre and abducts a child called Ruby.

In the subsequent chapter Billy and his chums find Scary Red’s house, lie in wait and when she emerges from the portal, child in arms, they fight to rescue young Ruby. Once the gang manage to overpower Scary Red, they then wrestle with the spot of bother that Ruby has found herself in, being in England, some 9,000 miles from her home in Alice Springs. So, not financially or logistically equipped to book a flight for Ruby, Billy and his friends must find a way to use Scary Red’s portal without her knowing… So far, so gripping.

And so to the offence. According to Sharon Davis, chief executive of National Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Education Commission, the storyline is “damaging and disrespectful” because “it perpetuates a racist stereotype that has been used to justify child removals for over a century”.

You see, in the story Scary Red enters a community centre of indigenous people. She blags her way in saying she works for a charity and wants to donate money and, having asked for a glass of water, off pops a grown-up leaving Ruby with Scary Red who then grabs her and escapes.

The insulting inference being that, as Ms Davis explains, First Nations families, “are easily swayed by money and neglect the safety of their children”.

When I read this, I was mightily surprised because I remember finding that particular chapter heavy-going. Jamie was desperately trying to tip-toe over the hot coals of modern Australian political correctness and, in doing so, employed very clunky language and dialogue. Scary Red tells Anna, for example, that “First Nations children seem to be more connected with nature – so their gardens produce not just quality, but quantity”. Which sounded more like a district council’s equalities and opportunities statement than the speech of an evil Queen.

But in spite of his tedious efforts, Jamie found himself hoisted by his own petard. Having to deal with this difficult incident while he was actually in Australia promoting another book – a cooking one; safer ground – he immediately caved in, apologised “wholeheartedly” saying: “It was never my intention to misinterpret this deeply painful issue. Together with my publishers we have decided to withdraw the book from sale.”

Aside from the grim task of wading through that chapter, I had actually thought he might have offended the Aussies with his description of a street in Alice Springs as having “bungalows that all look the same”. Racist!

But as anyone who has visited Australia recently will know, they have got very politically correct in their old age, a far cry from the days of inappropriate jokes from Bruces about their Sheilas. Although they haven’t, yet, gone quite so woke as the Kiwis (sorry, peoples of Aotearoa). Do a talk in a building such as the Melbourne Public Library and before you utter a word, you must first thank First Nations Australians for having the good grace to allow you to be there, having originally had the good grace to allow the building to be built. And for God’s sake, don’t utter the A word (Aboriginal, so help me God).

At the first whiff of complaint, Penguin Random House caved in saying “it is clear that our publishing standards fell short on this occasion” and they immediately began their own internal witch hunt to track down those whose job it is to “carry out sufficient sensitivity checks”.

This pathetic cowardice shames the name of British publishing. UK book publishers should be resolute and fearless in producing books that prick and challenge, annoy and outrage. They should then relish every row and incident and lap up the publicity of each fevered incident. But, as we know, these days they cower in the face of confected fury. They tone down Dahl and banish Raymond Briggs’ Fungus the Bogeyman from their back catalogues. And we parents are left with the soulless task of reading well-meaning, safe guff to our nippers, free of sizeism and words like “ugly” or “spotty”.

Except me, of course. I’ve got a library of fabulous, old-school children’s books which I’ll protect like family. The only problem I’m left with is who on earth will publish my own children’s books? Because ‘Malcolm, The Unlikely Adventurer’ is fat, lazy and very rude to his mother.