Best Home Cook
Phil Spencer’s Stately Homes
Rating: 
Where do they put it all? The judges on TV cookery shows must have hollow legs and stomachs made from empty cider barrels.
Best Home Cook (BBC1) was down to its last three contestants, but even so Mary Berry, Chris Bavin and Angela Hartnett demolished plate after plate of pasta parcels, fishcakes, pasty, tortilla wraps, salmon salad and curry . . . with chips. And that was just the first day.
For the grand showdown, between finalists Suzie and Georgia, the judges faced groaning tables of tuna tartare, roast beef with veg, chocolate fondant, all followed by goat’s cheese tartlet, roast chicken plus all the trimmings, and sticky toffee pud with ice cream.
Mary Berry, Chris Bavin and Angela Hartnett demolished plate after plate of pasta parcels, fishcakes, pasty, tortilla wraps, salmon salad and curry . . . with chips. They are pictured above with Claudia Winkleman
You could put on 3lb from just sniffing all that.
Mary in particular is as slight as a sparrow. How she keeps the weight off is a mystery.
She had plenty of practice on Bake Off, of course, but somehow a bite of fluffy sponge and a mouthful of meringue doesn’t seem as calorific as tree-trunk chips dripping with fish curry.
Perhaps food judges, like wine connoisseurs, have a bucket where they can discreetly spit out each faceful after chewing. If that’s how it’s done, I’m glad we don’t see.
An hour spent watching people cooking traditional dishes well will make anyone peckish. Best Home Cook concentrates on real food, the sort you want to feed your family, and not the demented creations of MasterChef.
Angela Hartnett and Mary Berry are pictured above. For the grand showdown, between finalists Suzie and Georgia, the judges faced groaning tables of tuna tartare, roast beef with veg, chocolate fondant, all followed by goat’s cheese tartlet, roast chicken plus all the trimmings, and sticky toffee pud with ice cream
It’s also genuinely friendly. Last year’s Bake Off made a noticeable effort to foster cameraderie between the competitors, but it truly felt as though Suzie and Georgia were pals rather than rivals by the end — not just sharing hugs and high-fives, but helping each other out in the kitchen.
The producers are still fiddling with the format. This time, one of the finalists, Sarah, was eliminated halfway through the hour, which left the decisive cook-off feeling like an encore.
I suspect there have been endless discussions at production meetings, with every BBC exec justifying his or her salary by adding a tweak. You know what they say about too many cooks.
But the series has earned another run . . . just as soon as the judges have worked off all those dinners.
The spectacular dining room at Chatsworth House, with its fabulously ornate ceiling, was a feast for the eyes as Stately Homes (More 4) returned.
Presenter Phil Spencer was delighted to discover the workmen mixed alcohol into the ceiling plaster to help it set faster.
Then they drank the leftover booze . . . hence the expression, ‘getting plastered’.
After years of presenting Location, Location, Location, Phil still thinks like the estate agent he once was.
As he strolled around the grounds, he summed up Chatsworth as ‘a touch bigger than the average semi; it also has a good-sized back garden’.
His lordship was nonetheless happy to provide a walking tour of the rooms and grounds. A housekeeper warned Phil not to address the peer as Your Grace: he was just ‘Duke’. Like John Wayne
Totting up the building costs, including the newly gold-leafed windows, he estimated the market value at £3.9 billion.
Alas, the owner, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, doesn’t want to sell.
His lordship was nonetheless happy to provide a walking tour of the rooms and grounds.
A housekeeper warned Phil not to address the peer as Your Grace: he was just ‘Duke’. Like John Wayne.
The tour proved thoroughly entertaining, and included a 3D, virtual-reality version of the hothouse that once contained the 6th Duke’s tropical plant collection.
He employed 30 stokers to keep the greenhouse boilers burning and the bananas blooming. Now that’s a man with rich tastes.
Dicey moment of the night: Hanging a picture straight is always tricky.
Hats off to V&A technician Allen and his team for hoisting a 500lb masterpiece up the stairs and onto the wall, in Secrets Of The Museum (BBC2). Hold it there! Left hand up a bit!