Cookery class

The other day there were four cookery programmes in prime time on the terrestrial channels. Why? What on earth makes this subject of such relentless fascination? At least on the similarly ubiquitous antiques shows you can look at the antiques. But so far you can’t taste the food, though no doubt they’re working on that as the next big thing after 3D. Instead of buying HD-ready televisions, we’ll get oven-ready sets. ‘Press the red button for venison in a raspberry coulis, or the blue button for turbot in a beurre blanc…’

The latest is Out of the Frying Pan (BBC 2) in which contestants who didn’t quite make it on Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant try to succeed in the real world, or in a world as real as anything surveyed by camera crews ever can be. James and Alasdair were celebrated on The Restaurant for being talented but liable to tremendous screw-ups. They were invited to a stately home where they were supposed to make three meals for 14 people from a tiny kitchen with an Aga so old, so small and so rusty that it would have given a Joanna Trollope unfaithful wife the dry heaves.

The host and organiser explained that it was a shooting party and that the guests were used to the very best, adding, ‘If anything goes wrong, that reflects on everybody.’ I had high hopes. James and Ali were going to be the new Laurel and Hardy. The dinner would end with the guests holding their stomachs as they ran to the loo, Ali scratching his head and the host ordering the pair out before they killed anyone else.

It didn’t work out like that, though it did start promisingly with at least one member of the party feeding lovingly prepared venison sausages to a dog.