The TV schedules might be teaming with food-related stuff at the moment, but boy, there’s a lot of chaff. I’ve had my fill of ‘diet or die’ fodder (thanks, but we WILL eat cake to make ourselves feel better in these straitened times).

All this ‘foraging is the new shopping’ malarkey is also doing my head in - especially when the Hairies (Hairy Bikers’ Best of British, 7pm, 17 January, BBC2) seemingly bought their blackberries (also, this might just be me, but isn’t there a fine line between foraging and theft? I’d hate to think people were getting the wrong message). As for How to be a Cock like Heston (8pm, 18 January, C4), forget it.

Thank God MasterChef was back (9pm, weekdays, BBC1) - minus the irritating X Factor-style auditions. And hidden in an afternoon slot was another gem, The Hungry Sailors (4pm, weekdays, ITV). Dick Strawbridge and his son James took to the seas on a coastal cooking trip around Britain “seeking out people doing something special with food,” in Dick’s words. And that’s exactly what they found.

Arriving in Plymouth, they headed to a pasty business, where James showed his dad up as the useless crimper he was. They then milled their own stoneground flour gathered veg from a walled garden and sourced lamb from a shoreline farm - all with a view to making a meal on the boat, which was easier said than done given the stove was on a gimbal and they had to make sausages using a bicycle pump!

But they pulled it off - as they did the programme. Just wish I’d recorded more than one.