Ace Of Cakes

No, not a parody of Motorhead's "classic" single (please feel free to name four others) but a wonderful series The Devil & I discovered on UKTV Food. It's basically about a cake making company - Charm City Cakes - in Baltimore, Maryland.

There's the slightly insane head chef, Duff Goldman, his organising, phone-call taking business partner Mary-Alice (sister of the Clutch lead singer, Neil Fallon) and the rest of the cake making staff. And the series follows them as they go about their work making weird and wonderful cakes for various people.

And that's it. There's no moralising, no "interesting" back stories about the staff or their customers, not even any actual recipes for the cakes.

But it is weirdly addictive entertainment. The show has brought Food Network (the US channel which commissioned it) some of the highest ratings it has ever received for a prime-time program. The June 4, 2008 episode had higher ratings than the NHL's 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. Which probably says more about the sad decline of hockey.

The reason I mention it now is because of a conversation between The Devil & myself last night. There's a guy called Geof who works for Charm City Cakes, and he is a hugely amusing man. And scary. And he has the most perfect voice for reading scary stories to kids. Geof could read ANYTHING and make it sound scary to a kid, as he has the oddest intonation when he speaks.

Bizarrely though, he also writes lyrics, plays guitar. And sings. Ladies & gentlemen, I give you, Geof Manthorne.