Gok Wan angered at food show title

Gok Wan angered at food show title
Gok Wan angered at food show title (Image credit: PA Archive/PA Photos)

Gok Wan has revealed he was not happy with the title mooted for his new Channel 4 cooking show. The fashion stylist, 37, is making a foray into cookery with Gok Cooks Chinese, a series which was almost called Gok's Wok. But he told the Radio Times: "If I was making something with a comical element Gok's Wok would have been fine. But I wanted the series to be taken seriously. "I was making a show that was about recipes that are hundreds, possibly thousands of years old - recipes that have been passed down through my family. I don't want to be disrespectful of that." The TV star said he was prepared for a backlash from people who feel he should stick to fashion. "I'm ready for the critics to say, 'What the hell is Gok doing? He normally grabs breasts and now he's grabbing woks - what gives him the right to do that?' "But the fact is that, for me, food came long before fashion. We worked in catering. We had family restaurants in Leicester. So food not only fed our family, it fed our wallets," he said.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.