I have avoided telly for years: I hate how I look on it. I’m not very good at it. It takes all day to film four usable minutes, it pays amazingly badly, and I am never ever happy with the result.

So I cannot really explain why I signed up for The Great British Menu, and then have agreed to another couple of follow-up series. It is partly ego of course. I quite enjoy being recognised in the supermarket or getting the odd fan letter. (I’d hate to be really famous because then you could never get your shopping done, or go to a restaurant, collapse on the beach in your least lovely swimsuit. But a titchy bit of celebrity feels pretty nice.)

It was also because it sounded, and was, such fun. Mathew Fort knows more about food than anyone I know, and he and Oliver can be informative and funny, and often outrageous, for hours on end. My job is to be the bossy nanny in between them, telling them to behave.

But mainly it was because I like the idea of a food program that spotlights the best chefs and the best food suppliers. Underneath all the banter there is a  serious intent to raise the profile of British cooking, encourage more chefs to try harder and to introduce the public to great produce on their doorsteps.

The Great British Menu is made by Optomen TV. The first series was a hunt for the best British chefs to cook the Queen’s 80th birthday lunch at the Mansion House, the second was a Christmas mini-series in aid of Children in Need and saw the four winners of the first series (Marcus Wareing, Richard Corrigan, Nick Nairn and Bryn Williams) compete to cook the best family Christmas dinner (Richard won). The third series saw those winners compete against new chefs to be chosen to cook a banquet for the British Ambassador in Paris, to be eaten by the great chefs and gourmets of France. Richard, Mark Hix, and Sat Bains pulled off an amazing dinner: Sat did a take on egg, bacon and mushy peas, Mark produced both the main course (stargazy pie with wild rabbit and crayfish) and the pud Perry jelly with elderflower ice cream.

Stargazy pie with wild rabbit and crayfish		Perry jelly with elderflower icecream

It was a very British, very delicious dinner that owed little to French cuisine. And hat’s off to the great British public who voted for a pie made of rabbit and crayfish in spite of Mark dubbing it “Vermin Pie” -- he says we should be eating pests like the rabbits that gobble up  crops and American Signal crayfish that have invaded our ponds. Well, vermin or not, the pie was terrific.