Free as a jailbird

Food programmes are having a strange effect on me: I watch them and feel nauseated. Masterchef, The Great British Bake Off, Great British Menu, half a dozen others. In the past I’ve watched and loved them all, sharing the exhilarating triumphs and gut-wrenching despair of the trembling hopefuls. A thousand times I’ve held my breath with them, waiting for the axe to fall: ‘The person leaving us this week is… Wendy.’ Cue the tears and blotchy, shell-shocked face — and that’s just me.

But lately something’s changed. I noticed myself finding the way the experts and chefs talked about the food vaguely distasteful, and the feeling grew stronger. It came to a head during an episode of Masterchef when some ‘executive chef’ was instructing an eager wannabe in the method of assembling his signature dish. The poor contestant placed a quenelle half a centimetre to the right of where the chef wanted it.