Oh Cook!: The cookbook from James May with simple, easy recipes that any idiot can make.

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Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). May says in the recipe the coat will make a “mess,” and he wasn’t kidding, but once they were fried, they looked like something out of a swanky retro Tiki bar and grill. It really does seem like it’s only been a few days since the last one, when he went top-bantering around Japan – though a quick glance at my records shows that it was in fact released in January.

Deliberately, defiantly, overwhelmingly low-wattage May insouciantly shows how easy it is to make decent grub with bonus asides on Fellini, Philip Larkin and William Blake, which you certainly don’t get with The Hairy Bikers.This is not true if you're making a programme about science or engineering or car history, where you have some authority, but I'm working on a cooking show, where I avowedly can't cook anyway, so everybody is part of the advisory committee and it does get bloody annoying, quite quickly. We had it as a side dish with some plain old diner-style meatloaf, but it was good enough to be a vegetarian main dish. The advantage of this home recipe is that, after eating it, you don’t have to wander the streets of an unfamiliar German city trying to find your hotel. But, actually, he can cook, surprisingly well in fact, rustling up some quite decent pies and lasagnes.

I thought I might plough a little bit of it and have a go at growing potatoes or parsnips, something that I imagine would be quite easy - it probably isn't. They're telling me how to do it and then they start telling me how to say it and how to present it and I want to go 'look, f*** off, that's the bit I can do'. Although when filming and not in lockdown, he's all about packets of nuts and fruit, cereal energy bars and the odd packet of Liquorice Allsorts. If they are not precooked, you will need to poach them first in simmering water, then fry or grill until they are crispy and form a brown crust. Rice noodles were invented as a way of stretching a poor harvest, while instant noodles were Japan’s response to being flooded with cheap US wheat to keep them from starving and turning to communism after the second world war.Michael Hogan for The Telegraph gave the series three out of five stars, saying the show has "unlikely charm" and there was "finally a cookery show for blokes". At home in London I’ve got an emergency supplies cupboard with a steak and kidney pudding that I’ve had since 1998. Every time we do something, somebody in the eight or 10 assembled people in the room pipes up with, 'Have you thought about doing it like that? Before reading the recipes on these pages, or indeed watching my cooking show, you should be aware that I can’t really cook. I collect really cool cookbooks, including many signed copies by well-known celebrity foodies such as the late Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain.