Why Mary Berry was right: bin the deep fat fryer

I don't have a lot of time for Gregg Wallace. I've always questioned his status as a judge on Masterchef based on his credentials of a) eating out a lot, and b) having been a grocer, which makes him an "ingredients expert" as he was once billed.

He's currently on honeymoon with his fourth wife, another young lady he met on Twitter. I'm saying nothing.

Wallace criticised the saintly Mary Berry for saying that no-one needs a deep fat fryer.  He said that Britain frys things, we always have, and there's nothing wrong with chips and spam fritters.

He's a little out-of-touch. Young mums use McCains oven chips. Heating oil to boiling point was never a very safe thing to do. I've never had a deep fat fryer.

On the point that "we've always done it, it's what we do,"  we used to do lots of things that we don't do now.  It doesn't make them right.  Slavery,  sacking women for being pregnant; corporal punishment in schools.

If Gregg casts his mind back to when he was a kid, I'm sure he did enjoy spam fritters and chips. We occasionally had chips cooked in the chip pan, with beef dripping. Delicious. And perfectly fine to have as a treat. Nobody snacked mindlessly between meals or drank sugary fizzy drinks. It was milk or squash in those days. Consequently, hardly anyone was obese. If you watch footage of real people from the 60s and 70s, they were all slim. There was only one boy at my school who was overweight.

It's a different story nowadays as we all know. You only have to see the kids waddling out of school and into the nearest takeaway to surmise that the last thing this lot need is extra chips, even if they are cooked by mum and not by Ronald McDonald.

Hampton Court Flower Show

The One Show garden

I decided to go to the Hampton Court flower show at the last minute, managing to get both a ticket and a day off work. It was partly to make up for the disappointment of missing the Chelsea flower show. Not only were we going on members' day, but we even had a delightful sit-down lunch to look forward to.  Unfortunately I indulged in oysters at a restaurant the day before and was stricken by food poisoning. So we didn't go.

I left for Hampton Court - 28 miles away - in good time and expected to get there just after the opening time of 10am.

I finally got in at 12.45! Unbelievable.

For the last seven miles it was nose-to-tail, traffic just creeping along a centimetre every 10 mins or so. I was relieved I wasn't with J. because like most men, he has zero tolerance of traffic jams.

By the time I got to the show I was feeling slightly frazzled.

It's vast, and very crowded. I didn't stay long in the flower tent because there were too many people. I took a few pictures of plants that impressed me. - see below, Meanwhile the rose and floral arrangement marquee was very disappponting. I'd anticipated being hit by the scent of hundreds of roses, but it was an olfactory let down.

The rose displays were underwhelming. I realise in July roses are past their past but I still expected more abundance of blooms from professional growers.

I perused some of the show guides and saw that Mary Berry was due to speak at 2.30 in the food theatre. I went over there at 2pm but the queue was already massively long so there was no chance of joining it and being able to get in.

The World War 1 display

On the plus side, the show gardens seemed easier to access than at Chelsea and looked better in real life than they did on TV.  There was a fascinating World War One section with a schools' scarecrow competition and trenches showing how the soldiers grew plants. There were some fabulous stalls for laydeez in the Country Living Magazine marquee. All manner of "tut," from jewellery to clothes and oil paintings.

By 3.30 I decided to confront the traffic again but first called by at some of the vendors selling plants (very good idea to site these near the car park!). I bought a few plants including three salvias, a penstemon, a couple of grasses and a couple more erigeron.

I may well go again next year but definitely by public transport, and with a partner in crime (not a husband....) to make it more fun. And I realised that I really enjoyed last year's Hyde Hall flower show, the nearest RHS garden to us. It may have been modest, with no show gardens, but it was a delight to get around and some of the plants I bought are flourishing. So that's a date for the diary towards the end of July.

The drama of cakes!

Who would have thought that a gentle little TV programme about baking would have become such a hot-house of gossip, speculation and vitriol?

I'm talking of course about The Great British Bake Off, the final of which is next Tuesday.

Before this series started judge Paul Hollywood had scandalised Twitter by apparently having a romance with his co-host of the US version, a Mexican named Marcela Valladolid.

Hollywood's wife added to the low simmer of angst by giving tearful interviews where she claimed it had all come out of the blue, etc etc, and then sued him for divorce citing adultery.

The series started and, phew, it was still the same. Mary Berry was still rocking colourful jackets;  Sue and Mel were still like a couple of mates from the pub, and Hollywood was still flashing his blue eyes and going on about soggy bottoms.

But the contestants were different this year. Either that or the way they filmed them was different.  I noticed a lot more competition between them;  when one was being judged favourably, another would purse her lips.

Even worse, the front runners were very arrogant about their ability quite early on in the series. Whenever Jennifer, Kimberley or Beca were given any sort of criticism they would put on a questioning "really?" look.

Jen would say nearly every time that she "made it at home several times and it was perfect" so she didn't understand why it had gone wrong.

Then there was the Ruby factor.  Ruby Tandoh is a 21 year old student who tells us she only started baking six months ago. That might explain why she is forever decrying her bakes and telling the judges what's wrong with them before they start tasting. This week she added an overlay of tears.  Psychologically, it makes it very difficult for the judges to be tough on her. Especially as Hollywood is supposedly smitten by her.

I'm not sure I've seen that. They flirt a little, but I suspect it's his reputation going before him.  Ruby acts like millions of attractive young women have acted for centuries. She's coy; she cries; she giggles. She simpers. If he falls for that, well, we all know there's no fool like an old fool.

Apparently Hollywood gave an interview to the Times yesterday and he's still proclaiming his innocence over the adultery and divorce business. He hints darkly there is more to it than people know.  Perhaps he and his wife weren't sleeping together. Frankly, do we even care?

He was pretty unchivalrous about Valladolid, suggesting she was wrong for the US version. Let's hope she doesn't retaliate.

The show moves to BBC1 next year and I hope it stays exactly the same.

Meanwhile for Tuesday's final I would love to see wacky Frances win. I love her creativity, and I liked  the way she snapped back at Beca "who wants to be boring?" when Beca said that Frances was on some planet all of her own. It is perhaps telling though that on the BBC GBBO website, the photo of Frances is smaller than the others.

Kimberley is far too smug and Ruby, well, it's too soon. She may be prodigiously talented but I fear it would do her no good at all to win at such a young age and be thrust into the spotlight of cookery books and TV appearances.

Who are you tipping to win?