I’m getting kind of bored with that spurious 5 a Day command we’ve been getting from nutritionists. Every time I read a newspaper there’s some new angle. Potatoes are good, potatoes are bad, a glass of wine is the elixir of life, two glasses and you might as well put a bullet through your brain and be done. And blueberries, blueberries, well, fail to snarf down a handful of them every morning and you’re guilty of wilful self-neglect. It can only be a matter of time before we get spotchecks from the anti-oxidant police.

Don’t get me wrong. I really like blueberries. I just don’t like being lectured on what to eat. And as someone who remembers post-war Britain, when the closest you came to fresh fruit was a can of peaches in syrup sent by solicitous Canadian relatives, I find myself wondering how the human race has survived for so long.

So today, in defiance of current nutritional thinking, I am making a Lancashire hotpot. It contains meat and potatoes, perfumed with one bay leaf and gently simmered in a low oven until Mr F says ‘What’s for lunch?’ Actually, I hope I’ll remember to anticipate him by half an hour so that I can remove the lid from the pot and give the potato slices time to develop brown, crispy edges. And tomorrow, if my heart survives the Hotpot, I’m going to make a tart with the plums I just bought from Mr Roopdidoop’s market stall. I shall serve it with creme fraiche. The full whack variety. Not worth alerting Reuters about I grant you, but there it is.

I would also like to put on record that I have never had an affair with Tiger Woods.