Food, glorious food

Despite a wet summer, the recent crop of food programmes has been prodigious: six episodes of Nigellissima, eight of Nigel Slater’s Dish Of The Day, six of Lorraine Pascale’s Fast, Fresh and Easy Food, 40 of Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals and 25 of Hugh’s Three Good Things — truly a basket of plenty. Two cooking competitions (The Great British Bake Off and Masterchef: The Professionals) have dished up a total of 34 episodes; Heston Blumenthal has hand-reared seven bloated and inedible turkeys (Heston’s Fantastical Food), and Yotam Ottolenghi (Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast) has concocted, in the kitchens of Morocco, Istanbul, Tunisia and Israel, four unexpectedly delicious treats.

This may seem like a season of bounty but in fact it is quite usual for our television schedules to boast a healthy stock of food shows all year round. One sort or another — the travelling chef, the competition, the novelty or the instructive — will always be available, and if there is none freshly made there will be a repeat: day or night, every day and (often in batches) at the weekend. At 3.50 a.m. on Wednesday 28 November, I see from the guide beside me, the Great British Food Revival was showing on BBC1. (‘Michel Roux Jr investigating strawberries’: just the thing to banish those pre-dawn gremlins.) On Sunday 25 November Jamie cooked all morning (on More4) and Hugh all afternoon (on Channel 4). In total, on that particular day, the main channels devoted nearly 12 hours to food programmes.

It is a long time since cooking shows were just about learning a skill. Now it is their business — they have made it a business — to captivate everyone. It makes sense: every one of us is a shopper and an eater, we are all hungry, we are a loyal market, and our appetite will never be satisfied — this eating lark is a lifelong commitment.