EVEN when he is not trying, Jamie Oliver can garner attention.

A novelty song that the 32-year-old television celebrity chef performed during a 2003 cooking road show was recently posted on YouTube and has, to date, received over 150,000 hits.

The song was a lyrical lamb curry recipe called Give It To Me Hot (Lamb Curry).

The Daily Mail reported that it 'made him a star in Thailand, Singapore and the Czech Republic'.

While the chef didn't exactly sing the song on stage, he mouthed a few lines of the lyrics while cooking up the curry and timed the tune to end when he finished making the dish.

During the performance, he squeezed in some time to play on his drum set.

A few of the lines of the song go:

I've found this new revelation it's called curry leaves,

Get yourself a handful and throw them in with ease,

Got my friend ginger just give him a peel,

It's so damn juicy, the flavour is unreal.

Oliver's friend, Mr Leigh Haggerwood, who composed tunes for some of his TV shows, wrote the calypso-inspired ditty.

Mr Haggerwood, 33, told the Daily Mail: 'It's incredible that this has made him famous with people who don't know he is a cook.

'We have talked about doing a singing recipe album.'

Singapore viewers know Oliver through his TV cooking shows like The Naked Chef, Oliver's Twist, Jamie's School Dinners and, most recently, Jamie At Home on cable TV, as well as his cookbooks.

But is it really as big here as the Daily Mail reported?

Student Ian Teo, 16, who posted a comment on the YouTube site under his online name Restinpeace5, said the song was 'kind of catchy'.

Ian, who wants to pursue a cooking career, pointed out there were similar songs in Oliver's latest TV show called Jamie Oliver: Australian Diary. One of the numbers was called Fish Stew.

Mr Norman Andrew, a 33-year-old writer, said that when he first saw Oliver's YouTube video, the footage looked ripe for mockery.

'Standing up... on the stage like that, with all those laser lighting effects, he (Oliver) could be a Simon Le Bon with a cooking show.'

'Then on second glance, while the music is kind of cheesy, you realise it's quite clever. The song's lyrics go through the recipe step by step, proving how easy it is to whip up a decent curry.'

Public relations consultant Dean Joe, 32, cringed when he saw the video and thinks Oliver is selling out by 'trying to infuse pop culture into his cooking'.

He said: 'I preferred Oliver during his Naked Chef days, when he was much more honest, when he talked about the food.

'Maybe he is trying to appeal to the younger crowd, trying to do the hip-hop thing. I think he is trying too hard to look cool.'

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