At this moment, many great public figures are in disarray. Gordon Brown suffers some manner of crippling invisibility disease. Madame Sarkozy's clothes have fallen off. And poor, troubled Britney Spears continues to “date” someone from Birmingham. None, however - adrift on their seas, lost in their deserts, listening to someone dolefully pronounce their name as “Britt-naaey” - even approach the calamity that is unfolding for Delia Smith. So long ensconced - almost literally: my God, the woman's made a lot of scones - as the nation's go-to girl for pies, pans and a rigorously weighed 225g of sifted self-raising flour, Delia's career is suffering a setback.

Her new TV series, Delia: How To Cheat At Cooking, has been unilaterally savaged. Raymond Blanc says she has “betrayed” her own values. The Times restaurant critic Giles Coren described one of her recipes as “like having a pig piss in your throat”. The Daily Record pointed out that following one of her “easy” recipes would entail spending 500 per cent more on ingredients than simply buying a ready-meal. Even Delia's fans are horrified: her own website forum has anguished, post-viewing comments such as: “I writhed. I cried...You've sold out.”

So let us be clear: Britain has turned on Delia. And Britain has turned on Delia because Delia has abandoned her former world of neat ham and egg pies, and respectable chocolate fudge cakes, to suddenly - and bewilderingly - start cooking like Frank Gallagher in Shameless. Just to keep you up to the mark, Delia's new recipes include shepherd's pie - made from tinned mince, frozen mash and pre-grated cheese - and a pasta dish that consisted of Delia stirring a jar of pesto into boiled pasta.

Technically, she is not really a cook now - more an “eminent reheater”. As you can see, this is a situation of unparalleled unlikelihood and gravity. It's like Sir David Attenborough doing a new landmark series centred solely on his cats. With special attention paid to the “kitschy but cool” cat “gay cowboy” outfits that Sir David has bought off the net.

This is all, obviously, distressing on a number of levels. Not least that no one seems to have noticed yet that Delia looks deeply unhappy. Yes, while others have accused Delia of having a midlife crisis, or have made cruel, unwarranted “drinky-drinky” motions when talking about her new show, I believe that Delia is doing most of this against her will; possibly at gunpoint. Look at the way the show is shot! This is not Delia's doing. We know what a Delia Smith cookery show looks like: a rather stern woman in an eerily tidy conservatory, beating eggs in a slightly disapproving silence. That's the way Delia rolls - almost literally: my God, the amount of sausage rolls that woman has made.

This new series, on the other hand, attempts to be all “razzy.” In a world where Jamie Oliver welcomes us into his shed and calls us “matey-bollocks,” and Nigella lies on her white silk bed, rubbing vol-au-vents onto her chests and screaming, Delia has clearly been told that she must let the viewers “into her world” in order to bring the recipes “to life”.

The problem here, though, is that while Jamie and Nigella lead lives of sensual, bohemian bonhomie - hosting Mexican-themed cocktail parties, roasting whole pigs over New Zealand fire-pits - Delia's life is basically Daily Mail: The Musical, but without any musical numbers. So far, we've seen Delia attend a business meeting where she announced that she was “very excited about tinned meat”, watched Delia banter with stiffness and unease (“You never get my recipes right!” Awkward silence.) with her husband, and followed Delia as she stands primly in church during Mass. It has not been, let us be clear, Babette's Feast. And the cinematography serves her further ill. When Delia brutally ejaculated cold, claggy mince from a tin, it was shot in the manner of the autopsy scenes in Wire In The Blood. I keep expecting Ken Stott to wander into shot, asking if the forensics on the victim's knickers have come back. I have never watched a cookery programme and remained so resolutely unhungry.

The most upsetting aspect of the ongoing Delia-ruination, however, is that - much like Christ before her - she is actually being punished for the greater crimes of mankind. Let's face it, as a nation, we are eating far worse than Delia's tinned-mince-and-frozen-mash shepherd's pie. Infinitesimally worse. Almost unfathomably worse. Britain exists on a diet of garlic bread, Space Raider crisps and banana Nesquik. However, we seem to believe that if we eat Greggs's cheese'n'onion slices but watch Jamie throw together a mackerel and endive salad, we are, somehow, nutritionally elevated above rats. This is a belief that echoes the childhood theories of my friend John, who believed that, if he ate an apple after he ate a Big Mac, the fruit would, somehow, “soak up” the fat.

Delia's tragedy is that she is the first and, indeed, only TV chef to acknowledge how awful our diet is. All she has done is be realistic about the pitiful hydrogenated spaff we live off, and suggest that, if we are going to have oven chips, that we at least serve it with some (frozen) green beans on the side. But this, of course, punctures our fantasy that we all live off sorrel leaves and spatchcock chicken, eaten off some “funky” plates in Jamie's dovecote. And so, unable to deal with the truth, we must exile her.

Delia, unlike every other cook on TV, is not dealing in aspiration, or food pornography, but rather the sad reality of British food in 2008. And that is what we are crucifying her for.

On a hot cross bun.

From a tin.

Mind yer manners, you 'orrible man

In Japan - ever a reliable source of novel social initiatives - public transport is to undergo a radical transformation. As of next month, an “etiquette police” will travel on buses, trains and underground, curbing commuters’ bad behaviour. The enforcers, named the Smile-Manner Squadron , will consist mainly of over-60s, who are “well acquainted with the standards of conduct associated with 'old Japan' ".They will request loud, leakyheadphones are turned down, prevent make-up being applied and insist that seats are given up for the elderly and pregnant.

Clearly we need such an intiative - and not just on public transport. There’s scarcely a street corner that wouldn’t be improved by some steely old battleaxe making people pick up litter, pull their trousers up, and refrain from playing all their ringtones one by one, in some manner of tinny, hateful disco.

Furthermore, I would arm these OAPs with either a furled umbrella or rolling pin and tell them to set about miscreants at will. This country needs a vigiliante force of grandmas to make it a better and happier place.

Unrolling stones

An exact replica of Stonehenge is to be built in Australia. Ross Smith, the former owner of a successful microbrewery, hopes the monument will be ready in time for Australia’s next summer solstice on December 21. “I’m doing it because I can,” Smith said, clearly mindful of the kind of ballsy, faux-naive quotes we expect from Australians on these kinds of matters. “Nowhere in the world has another complete Stonehenge been built.”

Smith eventually hopes to hire out the henge - which will cost £700,000 - for weddings, parties and functions which, as far as anyone knows, was what the Druids used the original one for anyway. It’s also going to be satisfying to see all those “But how on earth did the Ancient Britons build Stonehenge?” questions answered in around seven months. With HD footage.

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