Personally, I blame Nigella and Jamie. It used to be that tv cookery shows fell into one of two camps; the Dull-Yet-Doable, as spear-headed by the dull-yet-educative Delia Smith; or the Wacky and Indulgent, as spear-headed by the Two Fat Ladies and the eternally soused Keith Floyd.

I always preferred the latter. Without wishing to toot my own horn of plenty, I don’t need to be taught how to boil an egg and frankly I believe that devoting a full half hour of primetime to Remedial Ovum Preparation just takes British TV back to the days when that particular time slot was filled by sheepdog trials. Far more fun was watching Jennifer Patterson sinking her jewel-encrusted talons into a bowl of raw meat while Clarissa Dickson Wright excoriated vegetarians and those who cooked without butter or cream.

Were their recipes and onscreen instructions actually helpful? Absolutely not. No specific measurements were given, and they routinely cooked on picturesque Agas, so even a ballpark figure re cooking temperatures or times was out of the question. But that wasn’t the point. This was Food As Fun, As Culture And History. Mr Floyd was equally unforthcoming when it came to cooking times and measurements, but it was perfectly satisfying watching him drunkenly attempt to throw shallots into the sauté pan, and miss.

But no more. Ever since we were introduced to the Naked Chef (which didn’t seem such a bad idea back when he was relatively lithe), and Nigella was taken in hand by a stylist after her appearances on Nigel “I could use tarragon, I could use parsley, I could use Paraquat” Slater’s Real Food Show, we lovers of cookery tv have – with only a scant cup of exceptions- been left with only Doable, and Even-More-Doable from which to choose. And I don’t mean the food.  While the actual recipes on tv are far more accessible, we barely notice the food for the styling.

Now Jamie Oliver is, to my mind, actually a very good food-and-recipe-writer. I admire his “Naked” approach, because it means his dishes are achievable and informal. They’re also reliable and damn tasty. As such we are spared that hideous moment of every single deeply patronising Gary Rhodes show where he says, “It’s time to build the dish.” Build the dish? Out of clay?  I’m trying to make dinner, not  art for the ages. But Jamie’s actual talent got drowned under his “Cheeky Yet Crusading Chappie” persona like a fillet of Dover sole under a claggy cheese sauce.

Jamie’s latest show, “At Home With Jamie” has even taken him into the realms of what I call Food Fundamentalism, wherein we are encouraged, nay instructed, to grow our own produce, regardless of whether we live on a thirty acre farm or in a tenement. An interesting view from Jamie, given his long-term promotional contract with a certain major supermarket chain.

Similarly, Nigella has morphed in a not entirely pleasant manner. She’s also an excellent food writer, but I remember her back when she first came to tv notice on that Nigel Slater show and looked like a trainee Wiccan with all the makeup expertise of an eight-year-old girl. Now she’s certainly seductive, and apparently responsible for the phrase “food porn”. She’s also something of an exception to my “Trendism” annoyance, due to her use of dried herbs, store-bought infused oils, and willingness to take shortcuts. But she’s less and less convincing as the adverbs tumble clatteringly out of her mouth, and the millions roll in. There’s something almost insultingly disingenuous about a woman who claims to be a clumsy oaf in the kitchen, yet prepares a tomato sauce whilst wearing a white denim jacket. Her latest Christmas Special, when she had the utter gall to assert that she liked nothing better than to skip out on her guests in the midst of a cocktail party to fry a batch of fritters whilst wearing a designer frock, was the last straw of credibility for me.

Worst of all is that in their wake have followed a parade of TV cooks (and TV cookery shows) who are so over-styled and so over-conceived, that they’re almost enough to put you off cooking for life. People so utterly anodyne that if they did get you to pick up a frying pan, it would be to club them to death.

From Britain, we have the “Cook Yourself Thin” four-young-ladies-team, wherein they go all Trinny and Susannah, and pounce upon a hapless victim each week (said victim cannot outrun them for obvious reasons, is the apparent premise), and teach them how to cook their favourite dishes in such a way that they will lose a dress size in six weeks. Leaving aside the obvious point that if you cook said dish an entirely different way, it will cease to be your favourite dish, the TV show has to resort to a closing caption that reads along the lines of, “All dishes are included as part of a low-calorie diet, and guests are encouraged to exercise.” Speaking of obvious points, the very title “Cook Yourself Thin” implies that simply standing over a stove is a form of aerobic exercise. And the very idea of a diet programme masquerading as a cookery show on primetime TV (it’s on right after Jamie’s new show, so apparently the basic idea is Channel 4 saying, “here’s what you want to eat, but shouldn’t because it contains an actual calorie, and now here’s the crap version of what you CAN eat if you don’t want to wind up a spinster who can’t find the tv remote in the folds of her stomach”) makes me very angry indeed. It’s as if the execs at Channel 4 have gotten high on nail polish remover and come to believe they are in fact the editors of Heat Magazine.

But the cooks are pretty.

We also have “Indian Food Made Easy”, with the Nigella-esque Anjum Annam. Whilst I quite like her, and she certainly is gorgeous, I find this show almost as disingenuous as Nigella’s. It’s certainly instructive, and takes a bit of the mystery out of Indian Cuisine for those of us not used to anything but a pre-bought Madras paste, but it misses the vital point that “easy” does not equal “not-time-consuming”, and as such misses out on basic realism. Every episode runs along the lines of “It’s not difficult really, just dry-roast then grind these 37 different spices”. Give me the old days with Madhur Jaffrey and her delicious pronunciation of the word “coriander” any day. She never once flipped her hair or gazed coyly at the camera whilst nibbling a samosa.  And she never tried to de-exoticize the food she celebrated.

But Anjam’s pretty.

From what I can tell, US TV is little better. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but from what I have seen, current US fave, the overly perky and pretty Rachel Ray has come to tv screens straight from char-grilling chicken breasts in the eighth circle of Hell. She has yet to infest British screens, Thank the Lord, but is a classic example of what some people call a “pint-sized dynamo” and the rest of us call a “shrieking shrew with a serious RedBull addiction”. This woman is so damn perky and pretty you wonder if she ever stops to eat the food she’s cooking.. She cackles and capers and jumps around hollering “Delish!” like her drama coach was Ainsley Harriot. Rumour has it her marriage is on the rocks. She should perhaps have married a deaf guy with low blood pressure.

But she’s pretty.

There’s not much more joy when you get to “Everyday Italian” with Giada de Laurentiis. Now she’s very much in the Nigella mode. Gorgeous, and slim, so slim in fact that you wonder if she’s actually digested a plate of pasta since she hit puberty. Ms de Laurentiis (I’m assuming she’s from the “Crap Film” de Laurentii) may toss out recipes for Clams Casino and Mozarella En Carozza, very perkily indeed, but her teeth are so clenched that every time she uses words like “fresh” or “zingy”, you think she’s hawking some new feminine hygiene product.

But hey, she’s pretty.

Worst of all is the contender from Australia, which show is currently entitled “Bill’s Food”. I can possibly cope with all the offenders I’ve listed above, but Bill Granger makes me think longingly of the film “On The Beach”, wherein Australia was about to expire under a nuclear cloud. This man, and his show, are odious in the extreme. If you can get past the “Fake Ska” title music, you are then treated, before we get to Recipe One, to an intimate view of how this oleaginous creep with all the sexually suspect mannerisms of a US televangelist lives his life in a Sydney beach house with his beard, sorry, wife, and props, sorry, children. He’s obviously watched Nigella’s show over and over again- and copied some of the recipes, white chocolate mousse with passion fruit anyone?- and has practiced his coy smile to camera so often that he uses it at the end of each and every sentence. Now I don’t know if his parents are in fact deceased, but given his endless anecdotes about them in strictly the past tense, I can only assume that they no longer communicate with him, medium or no medium. His final offence? Actually uttering the sentence “If you like your food light and tasty, then quite often you won’t want it to be heavy.”

But in his creepily cherubic way, he’s pretty.

What annoys me about all these cookery presenters is not their actual recipes - even La Granger’s food looks very tasty and easy- but the relentless styling and trendism involved. No longer do we have a straight mid-range shot with a given cook chopping an onion whilst actually engaging us with their personality. Instead we have intimate angles of kumquats being sliced under a spray of running water, or slo-mo close-ups of prawns turning pink in a wok. It’s the food equivalent of an R-rated sex scene from the early 80’s. And the presenters are so beautifully made up and shellacked that although they’re standing over a stove with three steaming pans, they seem physically incapable of breaking a sweat. And why should they? They’ve probably stood over that stove for a grand total of thirty seconds after some poor pa has rubbed Vaseline on the camera lens, and if you think that it’s the presenters’ actual hands turning into prunes as they slice away under that sexy spray you probably also believe that there is such a thing as a “non-stress, fool-proof” soufflé that you can chuck in the oven and ignore on your first try, before you sit down to the main course. And their teeth are just too white. So white in fact that you begin to believe that a) they have never consumed red wine or coffee in their lives and do not keep so TV-slim by smoking instead of breakfasting, and b)the equally unconvincing “home kitchens” were designed around them.

It’s physically impossible for any of us out there in the real world to look that good when we’re cooking. Probably even when we’re NOT cooking. And anyway, unless it’s a third date, the cook should never, ever be more attractive than the food they’re cooking.

And as for the trendism, it seems almost every meal is touted as being “light” either in terms of calories or “food miles”. All ingredients are “organic, seasonal, and locally sourced”, even tinned chickpeas. (Incidentally, and this is an utter tangent, I far prefer the American term for that particular pulse, to whit, garbanzo bean. Far more amusing.) I don’t know about the US, but we in the UK appear to be under strict instructions only to eat vegetables and fruits that are actually in season in the UK. This annoys me greatly because a) the UK doesn’t actually have seasons, just Winter and August, and b) if eating a courgette in January, or a mango at any time of year is going to get me through a low patch, then the ozone layer be damned. There seems to be a general assumption that the entire Western world is lactose-intolerant, hence the current TV cookery obsession with goat’s cheese. Eat calcified urine if you so wish, but please don’t tell me it’s more pleasant than a decent brie. Similarly, if you watch a lot of TV cookery these days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all vegetables other than the beetroot had been rendered extinct by some sort of blight.

Fortunately, as I mentioned at the start of this lengthy tirade, there are a few holdouts. By which I mean actually entertaining and in no way socially intimidating TV cooks.

From Britain, we have the “Hairy Bikers Cookbook”, wherein two indeed very hairy bikers from ‘Oop’ North travel the world and cook local recipes. It’s fun, relaxed, and with yummy looking food. I’d love it that little bit more if I could understand a damn word they were saying.

Even wackier is Tamasin Day Lewis. She’s the sister of the Oscar-winning Daniel, and living proof that insanity does run in the family. She’s the absolute Queen of Food Fundamentalism, decrying any spice that is not used in its whole form as “those disgusting sweepings from some factory floor”, and all but outright running for public office under the slogan “Those Who Do Not Eat Only Seasonal And Locally Sourced Organic Vegetables Are Un-Patriotic And In League With Al-Quaida.” She may be the biggest offender with regard to my gripe about seasonality and food miles fascism, but she’s such an utter loon with huge hair that threatens to burst into flame every time she steps near her Aga, that she gets away with it.

From Australia, in counterpoint to Reverend Granger, we have Kylie Kwong, who not only de-mystifies the whole idea of “Australian? Asian? Fusion Food”, but does so enthusiastically and with an engagingly school-marmish air. She also wears horn-rimmed glasses at all times, so the ultra-chicness of the show styling gets just that humanising seasoning that stops your gorge from rising.

And last but certainly not least, is the Great White TV Cookery Hope from the US, the absolutely adorable Ina Garten. Her show is called “Barefoot Contessa”, and is currently by far the best cookery show on TV at the moment. It’s not just that she and her husband Geoffrey are way the cutest couple on TV, or that her show gives us the distinct impression that Mr and Mrs Garten are the only practising heterosexuals still living in the Hamptons. Nor is it just because most of her recipes begin with, “take a pound of butter.” It’s also not just because she’s one of the few TV cooks around who looks like they actually eat what they’re cooking. It’s really because she combines the actually useful and clear processes of Delia with the relaxed and “buy it and dress it up” approach of Nigella. In short, she’s an actual human being who knows a lot about cooking, and shares what she knows.

So I do believe that there’s hope yet for us who want to have fun while we’re either cooking or watching others do it on TV, but it’s a scant measure. So I say, Rebel! The next time some TV-addled cook serves you a wheel of Chevre at a dinner party, throw it at their head! The next time some food-fashionista hands you a plate of beetroot and declaims “It’s Organic!”, just yell, “So is a virus!”

Then go out, buy yourself The Two Fat Ladies on DVD, and order yourself a pizza. It may not be calorie-lite, and that pizza will certainly guzzle up some gas getting to you, but as the great Woody Allen once said:

“Sex is like pizza. Even if it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.”