Austerity with a twist of pepper

Now that the new benefits reforms have gone “live” and Ian Duncan Smith has made the claim that he could live on £57 a week “if he had to” – so that’s all right then – I can’t help noticing that foodie programmes are coming up with a new idea to impress the telly watching public: Take a cheap staple food and make a whole series of programmes about it.

Mary Berry has reminded us all of the joy of home-made scones; Paul Hollywood impresses us all by baking bread, kneading with a smile; and the Hairy Bikers are even extolling the virtues of potatoes; Easy programming too: a bit of social history, a bit of nostalgia, even a bit of home brewing (“sexy vodka”, anyone?) and you have a whole programme devoted to the humble spud. Count up the number of times anyone says “potato” and you can easily find ten minutes of prime viewing time. What a wheeze for the producers: potato scones, chocolate potato cake, potato vodka, potato soup, and all those healthy vitamins and minerals will keep you going, assuming you don’t follow the example of the chefs and peel them to death, pulverise them and mash them in with a host of unhealthy ingredients.

Maybe it will be a series about humble cabbages next, oats or rice. Whatever it is, you can be sure that the Prime Minister and his cronies will be jumping on the bandwagon, agreeing with those happy chefs who tell us there is nothing we can’t do with basic foodstuffs, if we set our mind to it. Potato petrol…..now, that’s a great idea, except that George Osborne would probably remind us it is illegal. How come other people get to make the rules?