This is one of the most bizarre programmes you’ll watch all year. Saucy kitchen tart Nigella Lawson finally appears to have cracked under the combined strain of being married to Charles Saatchi, supplying London’s yummy-mummies with a constant stream of ‘comfort food’ and trying to make dumplings seem sexy to a disinterested monday night audience. At one point during last night’s show, she walked into her ‘pantry’ (clearly a set in some disused warehouse in the east end) and announed that she liked going in there merely to “stroke the shelves”. Doctor!

The premise of the show is the Nigella pretends to be a busy working mother whilst finding ingenious ways to prepare meals on the fly. The most cringe-inducing scenes are the ones in which actors masquerade as friends/family members in an attempt to make her on-screen persona look in the least bit normal. Someone please tell the BBC that we all know it’s a set, we all know Nigella’s domestic affairs are handled by a team of servants and we all know that this food is stuff we will never, ever get round to making (and even if we wanted to couldn’t possibly source the ridiculously exotic ingredients).

Someone really needs to put a stop to this kind of dross. It’s patronising, it’s pointless and worst of all it’s completely and utterly compulsive.