What is to be done about the UK’s children, now obese as well as stupid, rude and unpleasant? One has only to walk down a suburban street (horror!)to see gangs of teenage children stuffing themselves with lard flavoured crisps washed down with own brand cola before waddling off to steal a hot hatchback or two

Of course Valentine’s Day is often a minefield for love. All too easy to take a false step and find oneself being blown up. Many men think that the perfect time to pop the question is in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, but sadly I think it is not.

Word filters through to the countryside that once more the forces of repression, philistinism and Stalinism are on the march. Even down here far from the seething hell that is London we hear the crunch of their sandals on our soil, the rustle of their Guardian colour supplements and the unmistakeable whiff of self-serving sanctity in the air. I refer of course to the move to ban foie gras.

Greetings once again. As I get older there may come a time when I can no longer pilot the Rolls around London ‘s restaurants. At which point I will become obliged to stay at home, either in our agreeable Mayfair flat or in our modest mansion in the country. There I will survive on a diet of Waitrose and Marks and Spencer meals all brought to me by my latest young male assistant via the magic of the Interwe

When I first started to discover food between the wars, it was really not at all fashionable. Indeed in the better country houses it was seen merely as a necessity. Anyone who had the temerity to savour his food, or expressed heresy such as likes or dislikes, was not asked back for weekend parties. My father, the first Earl of Hunt , used to believe that the only sport for a gentleman was hunting or fishing, and in the same vein always harboured suspicions that any man who liked his food was probably a bit of a whoopsy, as he liked to call the chaps we now call Friends of Dorothy. ‘That fellow jumps too low in the leapfrog!” he used to rumble disapprovingly whenever dear old Evelyn came to tea.

Having brought up sixteen children, fostered three and been a role model to thousands more I think I can say with some degree of confidence that no one loves babies more than I. Delightful, gurgling creatures they are and each time I have been summoned from the drawing room by a servant with the news that I am to be a father once again, I have always made a point of sending my wife my sincerest congratulations, before repairing to my club to stand a round of port.

It really has been a month of disappointments. Sometime last year my new young assistant Clive read out an email addressed to me (I never touch a computer myself for fear of catching a virus). This was from a company called something like Pumping!the!envelope.com who apparently make television programmes.