Wannabe chef Aaron Craze was last night announced the winner of Channel 4’s Jamie’s Chef, giving him the run of The Cock Inn in Beazley End, Essex. So what has he done with the place? Turned it from a grubby, run-down hellhole into a cosy countryside eatery ‘slash’ drinkerie according to the PR spin? If you’ve watched the programme you will have seen just how much the place is in need of a overhaul…right?

Not so, claim the locals, who have launched an attack on the programme. They say The Cock Inn was a great country pub till Jamie and his crew came along and portrayed it as a “dump”. The previous Spanish chef would serve monkfish and guinea fowl, hardly the domain of ‘traditional’ rubbish pub grub. There’d also be a large selection of real ales and a comfortable place to relax and drink them.

Jamie Oliver’s protégé Aaron has now been running the ‘restaurant’ for four months during which he has managed to displease and alienate many of the locals.

Andy Came, a British Telecom worker who lives near The Cock, said that it was now catering for wealthy tourists from London and that people living nearby have been priced out of their community pub.

“It was our local pub, and it’s not a pub anymore: it’s a restaurant. It’s now gone to us. You can’t just go in and have a pint anymore.”

In the new pub, there’s leaflets giving directions from London. They’re aiming at people with money and trying to pull in custom from London,” he said of the growing number of ‘foodies’ arriving from the metropolis.

A meal for two can come in at around £70 – a steep price-tag by any pub-measure.

Michael Ford, another local who also works for BT and lives near the pub, had this to say:

“Aaron certainly has turned the pub around. He has turned it from a delightful country pub serving excellent food at a reasonable price into a vulgar gastropub selling over-priced, poncey food.

“On the programme they were saying things like ‘would you eat in a place like this?’, but the chef was superb, and the food was excellent. It’s so untrue to say it was badly run before, and it wasn’t fair.”

It’s the first but probably not the last time Aaron will court controversy. The 28-year-old up-and-coming chef had previously learnt to cook at Fifteen, the east London restaurant that Oliver set up as a social experiment to train up disadvantaged kids and young adults. He was born into a family of West London criminals and dropped out of school at 15, but went on to graduate from the ‘cooking school’ with flying colours and has worked at The Ivy and Claridge’s, before landing his own restaurant. Or gastropub, as the locals are less-than-lovingly calling it.