A feast of fine TV for foodaholics

FOOD is one of my hobbies.

No, I’ll rephrase that: Food is my hobby. Sometimes I cook, but mainly I just love to eat. I don’t much mind what — egg and chips, lobster, Pot Noodle, even snails (garlicky and very, very chewy). I wish I could eat and be thin but as I obviously can’t, then fat and full it is.

I comfort myself with two facts: if God had meant me to be a size 12 he’d have made lettuce taste of chocolate and celery of chips. Secondly, in the next famine I shall survive, whereas Him Indoors who has to run around under the shower to get wet, won’t.

I digress. My love of food is well served at the banquet of television right now. We can dine almost exclusively off a diet of cookery programmes: “Marco’s Great British Feast”, “Ready, Steady, Cook”, “Saturday Kitchen”, “The F Word”.

I opted for “Ready, Steady, Cook” for starters. Anyone who can make six different dishes and a pud out of a packet of spaghetti and a cucumber is worth half an hour of anyone’s time..

There’s no competition for the main course — I’ve been picking it three times a week for the past month. “Celebrity Masterchef”. It has all the right ingredients: skill, excitement, and the joy of watching C-list stars make utter prats of themselves.

I’ve been there all the way with the three finalists. From watching Mark Moraghan (famous for being “Holby City’s” Owen Davis) storm out of a posh two-Michelin star restaurant because his celeric turned into soup, to Andi Peters (famous for. . . um, famous for something) serving raw partridges to a bunch of toffs. Albeit nicely browned on the outside.

And then there was Liz McClarnon. Famous for being a third of girl-band Atomic Kitten. Four weeks ago Liz had never used an oven. She ate out every night so at least she could recognise fine cuisine. Like roast chicken and stuffing . . . the dish that earned her a place in the semi-finals.

Our trying trio were ordered to cook under fire for the Army. Ok, there weren’t any real bullets. Then they sent them to brave alligators (or crocodiles, I can never tell the difference, they both taste the same) in the bush in temperatures of 50 degrees.

This was the best ingredient: sweat pouring from brows, Peters suffering from malaria (or a reaction to his malaria tablets), dishes going wrong.

Instead of uttering a few words to camera and pouting their way through a few tunes and well, whatever it was Andi Peters actually did, they achieved what hundreds of other people do day-in, day-out: serve food for a living.

And frankly, it wasn’t bad. To look at. Pity they haven’t invented smelly telly yet. Better still, taste telly. But going by looks alone, it was pretty good. Which just goes to show it can’t be that hard to become Michelin-starred chefs.

PS In case you missed it, Liz won with scallops, beef wellington and creme brulee.