This one was entitled "cooking with the stars" and featured Samir Longbottom from Coronation Street. Actually her name is Longchambon but I couldn't remember that until I looked it up. She plays the part of Maria - all squeals and excitement. She's married to Gary who is a murderer but nobody has found that out and it's one of those plots the scriptwriters can fall back on if the actor playing Gary ever decides to leave.
The other threequarters often says to me whilst watching Coronation Street "why did he/she do that" or "why did he/she say that?" My answer is always the same "because the scriptwriters decided they should."
You see (and you might like to look away now) soaps aren't real. They are dramas. The cast don't live together in the same street and they all have different names in real life. So Maria was Samir Ghadi and then Samir Smith and then Samir Longbottom (sorry Longchambon). It's all very confusing.
Anyway Maria or Samir (which incidentally is almost an anagram of Maria) was one of the contestants. She was up against Peter Andre who is well known for being Peter Andre - all froth and good nature.
Pete made a special pie. It looked like a pie and apparently tasted like a pie. Maria (sorry Samir) made a flashy steak dish that looked scrummy. She was mentored by the French chef Claude Christoph ( or something like that). Pete was mentored by the fat lady Clarissa Double Barralled name. When the celebrities got into a bit of a pickle they could call on their mentors for two minutes help. Enough time to get the lumps out of the gravy or properly pan fry the mushrooms.
At the end of the cooking, a number of celebrity chefs who nobody outside of catering had ever heard of, voted for their favourite meal of the two. They went for Maria's steak. But was that the end of Peter Andre? Absolutely not. He was pitted against Jason Watkins In a semi-final play off. In other words having failed, he was given another chance not to fail.
This time the duo had to cook Mille Feuille- a delicate French pastry, custard and fruit sweet that John Christophe or whatever his name was described as the ultimate French perfection. You know the kind of thing they charge a fortune for in Patisserie Valerie just because the place has a French name.
Now the Mille Feuille wasn't anywhere near as easy to do as the pie. Jason burnt his puff pastry and Peter's looked as if it came off a building site. The celebrity chefs judging the competition had words of advice. The contestants summoned their professional chef by hitting a golden gong. Yes you read that correctly - a golden gong. Calling on a professional chef is probably the same as a local football team bringing on Harry Kane for two minutes if they are having problems hitting the back of the net.
" The last thing you want is a wobbly mille fuille. You need to be perfectly stacked," one of the judges said, thus summing up in one sentence the whole theory of my own life. I've never had a wobbly Mille Fuille and whether I'm perfectly stacked - well that's not for me to say.
Another of the judges used the word unctiousness. God would know the meaning of that word. I know this for a fact because every time the celebrities did something right or wrong they started their exclamations with the word "My God."
But no deity was going to save them from a wobbly Mille doodah. To be honest they didn't look good. Peter Andre's was voted the least bad which put him into the grand final against Samir and somebody else. By this point I had lost all interest.
We also watched The Hundred which is to cricket what the celebrity chef programme is to cooking - all bells, whistles and commercialism.
The hundred is cricket for people with the attention span of a gnat. It consists of 100 balls per team as the title suggests. No need for intricate tactics here "just hit the bloody ball as hard as possible."
They've brought in things like time outs and mid game pop music which a few nights ago consisted of emerging talent Dylan singing one song. We know that Dylan is an emerging talent because she was in the emerging talent half time slot. She was probably cheap as well. Can you imagine Ed Sheeran rocking up to play one song?
Dylan is female by the way and has no connection with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan would have been interesting though as his one song would probably have lasted 20 minuets (sorry minutes).
The commentators on the Hundred also try to be very rock n roll. Former England captain Michael Vaughan told us that he is a passionate eater of sweets and had polished off plenty that day because he had watched two games and that was a lot of watching for a man of his age. Michael Vaughan incidentally is 48 so scarcely in his dotage.
There are two kinds of cricket commentators. By its sheer nature, there is a lot of time during any cricket match for them to entertain by chatting away on other subjects. Some do it extraordinarily well like the legendary Brian Johnston or Jonathan Agnew or David Bumble Lloyd or the glorious Henry Blofeld or Nasser Hussein and Michael Atherton. They are all massively knowledgeable and amusing. Then there are the second division players like Vaughan who talk about eating sweets and make you want to chuck something at the television.
The thing about the great cricket commentators is that they are naturally knowledgeable and funny (and usually both). They are entertainers whereas others are just dull and boring because they are trying too hard to be amusing.
I end today with my latest overused word - perfect. Next time you are in a cafe or restaurant and your order is taken by a young person I will lay even money that at the end they will say "Is that all... Perfect."
Pictures today are of North Norfolk and Blakeney in particular.