"EmmanuelDelcourPornStar" news and stories

Like a bad community college class, two weeks of "Chef Academy" -- Bravo's latest experiment in food-competition/sexed-up reality show -- is starting to make us wonder why we signed up in the first place.

Actually, make that a bad community college class in L.A., where everyone seems like he or she is permanently out on an audition. Whether it's their "candid" confessions to the camera, their home lives or their googly eyed reaction shots, Jean Christophe Novelli's nine would-be culinary students all seem so practiced, so rehearsed, there's nothing left to chance, and even less at risk.

Case in point: Emmanuel Delcour, the Mick Jagger-with-a-six-pack Frenchman who sauntered onto the set last week, demanding to be given a shot in this would-be rarefied kitchen on the basis of his sheer "passion" for food. On this week's episode, he was revealed to be a recovering porn star named Jean Val Jean. (Any reference to the lead character of "Les Misérables" is purely intentional, we think.)