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Biographies list my personal interests as singing, cooking and countryside. That is a rather short list! Singing and countryside you can find elsewhere on this website. So what about cooking?

As a child in Salisbury Close I was brought up in the lean years following our victory in the Second World War in 1945. Only a Labour Government could have mismanaged the economy so badly that it was 1953 before food rationing ended in the UK. I remember those ration books, entitling each citizen to so many ounces of butter, sugar or meat each week. So we kept our own hens for eggs and meat and caught fish in the river, which bounded two sides of the garden at the South Canonry. We even kept a pig which my father won in a skittles competition - just as well there was a proper pig-sty to go with it! When Skittles was slaughtered and cured, half had by law to go to the state for redistribution.

Our food was good but basic. Roast beef, mutton (not a lot of lamb about in those days) and pork were staple food. Poultry was an expensive treat before the days of battery hens. Rabbit was a great favourite. Fish was cheap and plentiful. So was cheese - though with the dairy industry nationalised and output restricted to cheddar and a couple of others, most of Britain's local, traditional cheeses were outlawed and killed off. Some, like Dorset Blue Vinney, became a black-market luxury.

The rivers that meet at Salisbury (the Avon, Nadder, Bourne, Wylye and Ebble) then had plentiful stocks of brown trout, pike, eels and crayfish - all of which we ate. We always went on our summer holidays to the West Coast of Scotland - staying on the way with cousins who farmed at Otterburn in Northumberland. Their wonderful farmhouse community was almost wholly self-sufficient. I recall the great kitchen and black, coal-fired cooking range presided over by the cheerful cook, Lena, who dispensed home-produced milk, butter, cream, bread, eggs, bacon, lamb, fruit and vegetables. Pancakes on the griddle were a speciality.

In the Scotland of the 1950's, greedy industrial fishing had not yet cleaned out the inshore stocks. We lived like kings on crabs, lobsters, salmon, haddock, cod, skate, bass and the lowly pollock, all of which we caught ourselves. As the youngest, it fell to me to collect from the rocks a bucket of mussels before breakfast, to be boiled up for bait No-one told me they were good to eat! Now I love them, along with oysters.

It was in the Hebrides that I acquired my taste for fine smoked fish. When we lived at Chilhampton Farmhouse in the 1990's I built my own smoker - and produced smoked haddock and kippers just as we liked them!

An uncle in Dorset was a tenant farmer of the Prince of Wales. He produced milk (there is nothing as good as milk fresh from the dairy), wheat and sheep. He was an international judge of Dorset Horn sheep.

All of this means that from a very early age I understood how the food chain works - and what can break it, be it brucelosis, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth disease, swine fever or the destructive nature of foxes, badgers and mankind. I learnt a deep respect for nature - the final arbiter. What we now call organic farming was the order of the day. It isn't new. It means accepting natural imperfections in quality and supply as the price of natural food. This is a price most people today will not pay or cannot afford.

I have visited the richest countries in the world and some of the poorest - like Mozambique and Nicaragua. We should count our blessings that in England we enjoy a plentiful and diverse variety of food and drink which is undreamed of by a majority of our fellow human beings around the world - and by too many poor families in the UK. It does not help to feel guilty about it. But that is one reason why I have always supported spending our taxpayers' money on international development projects. The UK has an unrivalled reputation for common-sense help with developing nation projects in primary health care, food production and education. The work on the ground is usually done best by our wonderful non-governmental organisations like Oxfam, the Red Cross, Hope and Homes for Children or World Vision.

We have to eat - so we may as well enjoy it if we can. But please spare more than a thought for the millions overseas who cannot join in with our feast-days and the many at home who will be lonely and excluded from the feasting. Why not make a special donation to an aid agency - or give to the Salisbury Salvation Army a sum equivalent to what you will spend on your Christmas dinner?

We always started the main meal of the day with a grace when I was a child - as did Sue. We continue the tradition. It doesn't have to be pious or complicated. My father's favourite was, "God be thanked". The longest in my experience is the Clare College grace which I used to have to recite as an undergraduate exhibitioner - about two minutes of Latin. But I can still remember most of it!

I learnt the rudiments of cooking before I was 10. We grew up with a loyal family retainer called Vi, a Devon girl who cooked instinctively and rarely consulted a recipe. There was no Sunday School at Salisbury Cathedral in those days - so I stayed at home and "helped" get Sunday lunch. Times have changed. Sue and I - and all three children - enjoy buying, preparing, cooking and eating food. We are unfazed by those with special dietary preferences - indeed I recently found myself cooking three different menus for four people - one veggie, one fish-eater and two omnivores.

The growth in TV cookery programmes and celebrity chefs is a good thing - and great fun. It must help raise standards and expectations. I think of the contributions, for example, of Rick Stein, Ainsley Harriott, Antonio Carluccio, Floyd and others. Their TV and their books are good fun and many of their techniques and recipes are excellent. However, there are a dozen or so cookery books I wouldn't be without. Mrs Beeton is still a must, as is Larousse Gastronomique. Jeanne Strang's "Goose Fat and Garlic", Paula Wolfert's "The Cooking of South West France" and Elizabeth David's classic "French Provincial Cooking" tell us most of what we need to know about Europe's gastronomic paradise. Nor would I be without four of Jane Grigson's masterpieces, "Fish Cookery", "The Vegetable Book", "The Mushroom Feast" and "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery". Keep in your kitchen Nika Hazeldon's "Vegetable Cookery", Tom Stobart's "Herbs, Spices and Flavourings" and Alan Davidson's "Mediterranean Seafood" and if you can get them (in French) Ginette Mathiot's "La Cuisine pour tous" and "Les Conserves pour tous". I could go on...

Supermarkets are a very good thing, supplemented by our essential corner shops. But neither can substitute for fresh food markets like the centuries-old ones we enjoy in Salisbury, Wilton and Amesbury. Wherever we go in the world Sue and I make a bee-line for the local food markets, be it in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka or France. They tell you so much about local food and cookery, about what is in season - and what might be good on a restaurant menu.

At home, I've always shared the cooking at weekends. What is the point of being at home if you're all in separate rooms doing your own things? Nor are there any more excuses for men to pretend they can't cook - when such a high proportion of the household-name chefs are men? I must resist the temptation to write my own cookery book at this point. But let me offer a few tips.

If you like either sushi or pickled fish like gravadlax, buy a chunk of very fresh raw tunny, slice it as thinly as you can manage with a very sharp knife and marinade it in olive oil and fresh lime juice (or little plastic bottles will do) in your fridge for a few hours. Serve on a green salad. Special!

John Dory is a very ugly, small flatfish and it is very expensive in French restaurants (where it is called St.Pierre because of the finger marks behind the gills). But you sometimes see it in Salisbury Market going incredibly cheap. If you see it, buy it, cheap or not because it is a real treat grilled over a wood BBQ, Much better than lotte, for example.

Finding a butcher who has the time, patience and skill to hang meat properly is a rare pleasure - and one in the eye for the supermarkets who claim what their customers want is bright pink, freshly-killed, fat free, tasteless and tough. I don't think so! My family has been going to the same Salisbury butcher since 1947 - and Pritchetts doesn't need a loyalty card. There are at least half-a-dozen more traditional family butchers in South Wiltshire. Some of the supermarkets try very hard to attain the highest standards on their meat counters, I know - and they probably do win on price and convenience. But they come no-where in the battle for better bacon - have you tried Sandridge Farm traditional smoked Wiltshire bacon?

Even tough, pink, cheap beef can become a wonderful tender stew (try a 10-hour marinade in black peppers, juniper berries, bay leaves and a choice of red wine or beer). I believe the best roasts come from well-hung meat. Try and find rolled sirloin of beef with little marbled streaks of fat through it, like it used to be. It is pricey - so you eat it so rarely that the tiny bit of extra fat which adds such flavour must easily outweigh the supposed health risk...

The pig industry is in real crisis - and good local farmers are having a very bad time of it, so do ask for Wiltshire pork. I have discovered one enterprising farmer north of Salisbury who is getting his pigs slaughtered, cured and smoked locally, and selling it direct to customers, nicely packaged as different joints, as long as you buy it by the quarter, half or whole pig. That adds value to the farmer and value for money and local quality for the consumer.

We are fortunate that local game is so readily available in season. The pheasants are a treat (and don't forget the pleasures of good, old-fashioned pigeon pie!). The venison is wonderful - if your regular butcher doesn't have it I recommend you try Salisbury and Wilton markets where the enterprising and cheery John and Jackie Longley sell usefully packaged venison along with a wide range of poultry and cheese.

Sue and I always go for vegetables and fruit in season - with the honourable exception of the ubiquitous packet of frozen peas for convenience, Where's the fun, not to mention the taste, in strawberries at Christmas, please? And if fresh fruit is a bit limited in mid-winter, give me some bottled plums in eau-de-vie anytime!

When it comes to cheese, we are spoiled. Many old English cheeses are experiencing a renaissance, thank goodness. And there is nothing I know that beats a mature Stilton or Cheddar. I think French cheeses are not strictly comparable. They are not designed to be eaten as English cheese, which might round off a meal or equally well be a meal as in sandwiches or a ploughman's lunch. French cheese, on the other hand, is eaten before the final course, without bread or biscuits and it is unparalleled in its variety, flavour, aroma and texture. It calls for something more - something sweet, afterwards. I do have my favourites. One of the few cheeses from Burgundy and one of the best-kept secrets of the fromagiers is Epoisses. Occasionally you see it in specialist cheese shops - and I have even seen it in a supermarket in Salisbury. I also adore Roquefort - and it need not be £14 a kilo. Genuine sheepsmilk Roquefort from newer caves is half that price. Another great sheep cheese is brebis, from the Pyrennees. And from the mountains of Central France comes a cow's-milk rival to cheddar - Cantal. We also love goat's cheeses - and because we still think the best ones are fresh and soft, it doesn't matter whether they come from England, Wales or France - so buy British!

When it comes to drinks, I could go on for hours about wines and beers - so I'll just say we're lucky to have some superb small private brewing enterprises around Salisbury. But don't forget cider! There are about fifty traditional producers of still cider - including Bulmers, who besides their well-known brands make "No. 7", which takes a lot of beating. Surf the net for more from smaller firms and families who make superb cider - as good and as strong as a glass of wine. Maybe one day I will write that cookery book - or perhaps someone will suggest a TV show or a foodie column!

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