New Thai PM to 'keep on cooking'
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Thai celebrity chef Samak Sundaravej is not going to let a little thing like being Prime Minister interfere with his true passion - cooking.
Moments after being voted in on Monday, the combative right-wing politician vowed to revive his weekly cooking show Tasting, Grumbling, which went off the air this month after the outgoing army-appointed government took over its host station.
"We still have three months of our new cooking show on tape. The constitution does not prohibit a prime minister from doing TV shows," the 72-year-old told reporters at his favourite open-air food market in Bangkok.
Over the last seven years, Tasting, Grumbling has become a staple for lovers of Thailand's spicy food, even though its host is not to everyone's taste.
Opinion polls suggest Mr Samak, who made his name as a vitriolic anti-communist radio commentator in the 1970s, enjoys the support of less than half the country.
As a frontman for ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, he has also made fierce enemies in the military and royalist establishment that orchestrated the September 2006 coup.
- Reuters
