When I was growing up in the Fifties, there was no such thing as a ready meal. Chickens came whole and were a treat, and my regular Sunday job was to make the pastry for the inevitable pie for pudding.

I hated my cookery chores, my school didn’t have a domestic science wing, so I left home thinking I couldn’t cook. Living on a shoestring soon awakened my latent kitchen skills and I discovered I could eat very well on very little. All those bored hours of hanging around in the kitchen while my mother prepared our meals had taught me basic skills such as frying an onion, browning meat, simmering and roasting.

My sons, now in their twenties, learnt to make the food they loved out of greed – initially, a good old fry up, then egg fried rice, pizza, spag bol and roast chicken with all the trimmings – because their pleas for the supermarket version fell on deaf ears. When they were old enough, they both worked in restaurants and I reckon that’s the best lesson of all, because they learnt not to waste food – and to clear up after themselves.

For children brought up on ready meals, it’s good news from Ed Balls that the Government is to make cooking compulsory for 11-14 years but it’s going to take a very clever syllabus to equip them to feed themselves healthily and well on half hour a week. While the government objective is to cut down on obesity, the real skill will be, dare I say it, to make cooking sexy.

A touch of the Jamies is what’s needed. Teenagers need to feel that it’s groovy to feed themselves and their friends with home-cooked food, and feel pride that their efforts will taste better than the pricey supermarket equivalent.

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